Former Manchester United defender Rio Ferdinand was asked about ticket prices while he was in the United States last weekend for the draw for the 2026 Fifa World Cup finals, given the cost of match tickets and dynamic pricing models that could be beyond the reach of travelling fans.
“I think Fifa are conscious, the powers that be there,” replied Ferdinand. “We could look at every industry, ever sector. It’s more about making sure that there’s a product there that’s super elite that matches what’s on the pitch. Then everyone can feel it’s justified.
“But I am a man of the people in terms of coming from a place where we were always hoping for things to be accessible. And I know that the people behind the scenes at Fifa are aiming and working towards something like that. Whether they get there remains to be seen.”
When the rates for 2026 World Cup finals tickets dropped on Thursday, it was astonishing. Not only are costs several times higher than those projected by governing body Fifa when the bid was won in 2018, tickets are priced over four times what they were in Qatar for the 2022 finals.
The cheapest tickets for fans who do manage to secure them from the limited allocations go from $220 for group games to $4,185 for the final. Still, the lowest-priced tickets will not be available to most supporters.
Competing teams will receive between 3,500 to 4,000 tickets in 65,000-85,000 seater stadiums for group games. The rest will be on the open market. And that’s without mentioning the executive packages. A major feature in this week’s New Yorker magazine a football stadium under the heading ‘How the Sports Stadium went Luxe’.
While Uefa, European football's governing body, have helped bring down ticket prices for hardcore fans in Europe, capping away tickets at €30 for the Europa Conference League, €40 for the Europa League and €60 for the Champions League and making finals affordable for the fans who go to all the games (Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur fans paid only €40 to sit behind the goals for the Europa League final in Bilbao in May), Fifa have gone the other way.
“Ticket prices are a betrayal to the most dedicated fans,” stated Football Supporters Europe (FSE), who worked with Uefa to bring prices down, in a statement. “At least $6,900 to support your team from the first match to the final – nearly five times more than in Qatar. National team supporters are expected to pay this full amount in early 2026 to have the opportunity to follow their team up to the final.
"Adding insult to injury, the lowest price category will not be available to the most dedicated supporters through their National Associations, as Fifa chose to reserve the scarce number of Category 4 tickets to the general sales, subject to dynamic ticket pricing. This is a monumental betrayal of the tradition of the World Cup, ignoring the contribution of supporters to the spectacle it is. FSE calls for the immediate halt to ticket sales."
There are several factors at play. High ticket prices for elite sports events in the US have become an unfortunate norm, in part because its economy, the world’s biggest and one where wages have pulled away from European equivalents, can support them. It’s why the world’s leading football teams play so many pre-season friendly games there. The average annual wage in the USA last year was $82,933 – $20,000 more than in the UK, itself one of the richest countries in the world. A strong dollar only makes this worse for visitors.
When Manchester United’s Under-21s played fourth-tier Wrexham in a 2023 friendly in San Diego, there was outrage in Manchester that tickets cost $200. Yet it was barely mentioned by those who bought the tickets in California; it simply wasn’t an issue.
Yet the World Cup, by its definition, is not a domestic tournament and the high prices have made visiting the US prohibitive for many and contributed to a drop in tourist numbers in tourist spots like Las Vegas.
It’s not just match tickets. The cost of flights and hotels around the tournament has also risen exponentially. Few expect a trip to the USA in the summer to be cheap, but it’s the scale of the increases that have shocked football fans.
The National understands that several football federations are angry about the pricing. The mood was similar among fans.
“I spent years looking forward to this,” Michael Gibson, an England supporter, said. “Travelled everywhere to earn caps and this is our reward. Well, that’s it. I’m not going unless there's a drastic change. Which there won’t be.”
Dynamic pricing – where ticket prices rise and fall according to demand – can further skew figures and push prices upwards for the most popular teams. However, it had the opposite impact during the recent Fifa Club World Cup in the US, as the lack of demand deflated prices.
Fifa will also operate their own resale market. There, sellers can charge many times above face value for games in the United States and Canada, but not Mexico, and take 30 per cent of the sell-on price.
Despite Fifa's claims about accessibility, fans can, it seems, no longer afford what many see as the pinnacle of the people’s game.
