In sport, fairness matters. But when it comes to buying tickets to watch the world’s biggest ever sporting event, money matters too.
Attending the men’s Fifa World Cup 2026 will be much more expensive than any previous World Cup. And that’s not what fans were promised.
In fact, when the US, Canada and Mexico set out their original bid to host the tournament, they said a seat at the final would cost a maximum of US$1,550 (£1,174).
But by April 2026, the cheapest standard final ticket had reached US$5,785. The most expensive seats hit US$10,990 and later tripled. Just two days before the start of the tournament there were reports of 180,000 unsold tickets.
Politicians in New York and New Jersey have launched a formal investigation into allegations that Fifa has confused fans and inflated prices. Fans have complained of a lack of clarity, with many waiting hours in online queuing systems with no idea of the amount they’d have to pay when (and if) they were allocated tickets.
Overall, prices went up for 90 out of 104 matches.
The increase in costs may remind some music fans of the 2024 scandal over Oasis concert tickets when customers watched prices more than double from £148 to £355 as they waited in online queues.
“Dynamic pricing”, when prices go up and down depending on levels of demand, will also be familiar to anyone who has been surprised by swift changes in the price of flights before a holiday. The same seat can cost more today than it did yesterday simply because more people want it.
Fifa denies that it is has engaged in dynamic pricing, saying that they use “variable pricing” instead. But from a consumer’s point of view, it amounts to the same result – the price of tickets that they want to buy changes, usually in an upward direction.
In response to the Oasis dynamic pricing episode, UK regulators later forced ticket sellers to commit to showing price ranges before fans join a queue. By using a “variable” system, Fifa positions itself outside that regulatory precedent entirely.
It faces no obligation to disclose prices in advance and no requirement to explain how they change.
A game of monopoly
But dynamic pricing isn’t always a bad thing for consumers. In fact, it can help them to get a better deal. Economists studying airline markets found that dynamic pricing can reduce prices as different airlines compete for passengers.
The trouble is that Fifa operates in a market with zero competition. No rival sells World Cup tickets. No substitute product exists.
The work of Nobel prize-winning economist Jean Tirole demonstrated that when a single firm controls an essential platform and operates at every level of the market, competitive discipline on pricing disappears. The operator stops seeking an efficient price and starts trying to extract the very maximum that the consumer will tolerate.
For football World Cups, Fifa sets the primary price. It runs the only sanctioned resale marketplace. It pockets 30% on every secondary transaction when unwanted tickets are sold on. It makes money on the first sale, and earns a bit more on the second.
No outcome costs Fifa money. No regulators intervene. But not everyone is prepared to pay out.
Adjusting for inflation, World Cup ticket prices have been stable for 30 years. Then Fifa introduced its new model and the entire pricing architecture shifted. This would explain all the unsold tickets.
For example, England’s semi-final and final allocations failed to sell out. Every fan who applied got a seat.
But the cheapest final ticket through the England Supporters Travel Club still cost £3,119. At Euro 2024 in Berlin, fans paid £83 for the equivalent.
After the backlash, Fifa introduced a US$60 “Supporter Entry Tier” for every match, including the final. It amounts to roughly 10% of each national association’s allocation, a few hundred seats in stadiums holding up 80,000. As a pricing intervention, it changes nothing apart from an attempt to absorb criticism.
The day before the World Cub began Fifa president Gianni Infantino defended the level of ticket pricing, claiming that if they were cheaper the majority would have been resold on the black market. He added that the money generated was required to fund football development across the world.
Consumer research explains exactly what went wrong. When people buy a service rarely and can’t understand how the price was set, they don’t just feel frustrated, they feel cheated.
And when they feel cheated, they walk away. Fifa treated fan loyalty as guaranteed demand. Supporters’ reaction proved it isn’t.
Some football supporter groups have now filed a complaint with the European Commission. Uefa has already gone a different direction, capping prices for Euro 2028 with nearly half of all tickets under £60.
Then, at the start of June, Fifa quietly slashed prices across all 104 matches and returned 70% of its block booked hotel rooms due to low demand – a last minute change of tactics probably designed to save face and avoid empty seats. But to many, desperately chasing lost fans after trying to extract more revenue than any World Cup in history already looks like foul play.
