At soccer’s World Cup, the top scorer gets the “golden boot,” and the best goalkeeper is handed the “golden gloves.” This year’s tournament will also provide organizer FIFA with a golden opportunity to create billions in additional ticket revenues.
Ticket prices are so high that even President Donald Trump, a billionaire ally of FIFA President Gianni Infantino, said he wouldn’t pay.
The concern is that FIFA is pricing out many of the sport’s most devoted fans. In the 2022 Qatar-hosted World Cup, group-stage Category 1 tickets – the best seats – cost about $220, while Qatari residents could purchase tickets for $11 in some group-stage matches. Category 1 tickets to the final were about $1,600.
For the 2026 World Cup, dynamic pricing, which deliberately makes pricing opaque and subject to real-time changes, is being used for the first time. It means ticket prices may vary dramatically both across games and even for a given game over time.
The initial baseline for Category 1 tickets during World Cup 2026 was about $600 when they first went on sale in the fall of 2025 but now they generally sell for over $1,000 and sometimes much higher. The price for Category 1 tickets for the opening game in Mexico City is currently over $2,500, and even Category 3 tickets, the lowest available tier, are over $1,000. For the final, Category 1 tickets initially cost over $6,000 and had exceeded $32,000 by early May.
As an emeritus professor of finance and author of “Keeping Score: The Economics of Big Time Sports,” I’ve done some number crunching and predict that increased ticket receipts will help FIFA exceed $15 billion in revenue this world cup cycle – which would be a record-breaker for soccer’s governing body and significantly more than its 2022 stated goal of $11 billion.
FIFA’s ticket pricing approach may be a logical way to capture at least some of the revenue that normally goes to ticket scalpers, but it’s also unlikely to find a sympathetic audience among potential ticket buyers. Further, what remains unclear is FIFA’s plan on how to spend the extra billions of revenue, with its stated goal to support positive social change belied by a track record of corruption and lack of transparency.
How FIFA operates
It’s important to put ticket pricing in the context of FIFA’s broader finances and objectives.
FIFA is a nonprofit organization, registered as a charity in Switzerland, with a mandate not only to organize competitions like the World Cup but also to grow the game and expand soccer access globally.
It operates on a four-year budget cycle with most revenues generated by the World Cup in the last year of the cycle.
Historical comparisons help frame the issue. The 1994 World Cup in the United States, widely seen as a major success, generated $700 million in net revenue – or profits – versus a $550 million budget, driven largely by stronger-than-expected ticket sales and sponsorships. Large venues and high attendance also helped advance FIFA’s development goals, including the launch of Major League Soccer.
By 2022, FIFA’s finances had grown dramatically. Revenue for the cycle that included that year’s World Cup was budgeted at $6.44 billion but ended up reaching $7.57 billion — with most growth coming from broadcasting and marketing.
Budgeted ticket revenue appeared modest due to smaller venues in Qatar, but actual ticket revenue significantly exceeded expectations, most likely due to FIFA’s conservative revenue forecast. On the cost side, spending closely matched the budget, with $2.8 billion allocated to development programs in the 2019-2022 cycle. Despite this expense, reserves rose from $2.81 billion to $3.89 billion as a result of the 2022 tournament’s success.
Looking ahead to the 2026 World Cup cycle, FIFA budgeted that revenue would increase by $4.36 billion relative to the 2019-2022 cycle, to $11 billion, driven largely by ticketing — up $2.59 billion — and broadcasting, up $890 million. Costs were expected to rise by $4.57 billion, implying a projected surplus of about $100 million, the same small increase projected in the prior cycle. By 2024, a revised FIFA budget increased the forecasted revenue for the 2023-2026 cycle up to $13 billion.
FIFA’s leverage with ticket demand
FIFA’s track record suggests a pattern: conservative revenue projections, accurate cost control and consistent “surprises” in ticketing and licensing that generate higher than expected revenues and a dramatic increase in ending reserves.
My projections suggest that broadcasting and marketing this year are on track to equal their budgeted values, and historically FIFA’s actual costs closely track budget values. But ticketing remains the key revenue variable – and the central controversy. The expanded 2026 tournament means more teams, more matches, more fans and significantly higher ticket demand.
Even with larger stadiums than any World Cup since 1994, demand has vastly exceeded supply. There were over 500 million ticket requests for the random draw, but roughly 7.1 million available seats.
This imbalance gave FIFA tremendous pricing power. To try to mitigate criticism, FIFA introduced $60 “Supporter Entry Tickets” allocated through national associations. Yet these account for only a small share of tickets, fewer than 600 per match, and have done little to dampen the outrage over prices.
Most tickets have been sold in phases using dynamic pricing, with substantial increases across phases and most sales occurring in the later and more expensive phases. Venue seating charts also indicate most tickets are classified as the highest priced tier. Meanwhile, FIFA will receive ticket revenue from FIFA-controlled resale.
All three factors will likely push ticket revenue well above FIFA’s budget. Based on these dynamics, I project ticketing and hospitality revenue of a minimum of $7.44 billion – more than double FIFA’s budget, but consistent with stadium capacities, pricing across phases, seat allocation by category and ongoing resale activity.
Ticket and hospitality revenue per match in 2022 averaged $14.5 million. FIFA’s $3.1 billion budget for 2026 implies average ticket revenue per match would be about about $30 million. But given the larger stadiums and substantially higher ticket prices, that number appears to grossly understate actual ticket revenues. A final ticketing and hospitality value of close to $9 billion would not be a surprise. My predicted total revenue for FIFA is $14 billion to $19 billion.
AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin
Following the money
Soccer fans, whether they are ticket buyers or media viewers, generate FIFA’s revenue. In turn, FIFA’s objectives are to use those funds to put on a great World Cup and to grow soccer and make it accessible. As revenues grow, however, it is reasonable to ask why – beyond fairness and ticket accessibility questions – FIFA believes that it needs reserves of over $4 billion – over half of its total costs in the 2019-22 cycle?
Indeed, the numbers suggest the organization has actually decreased some core funding priorities on a relative basis – significantly.
In the 2023-26 cycle, the budget for competitions rose from $2.45 billion to $5.62 billion, about a 130% increase, while the budget for development increased only 44%, and its share of budgeted revenues dropped from 44% to 36%.
FIFA could argue that maximum revenue is needed to cover costs of future events and fund soccer development, but that is not the whole story told by FIFA’s 2027-2030 budget.
Total additional costs are set at around $3 billion, with the main driver being competition and events. Crucially, for the 2019-2022 cycle, development was 44% of the costs; for 2023-2026, it dropped to 36% of the costs; and for the 2027-2030 cycle, it is budgeted to further decrease to 29% of costs.
Undoubtedly, these numbers will change, but they currently do not signal that FIFA is going to use its additional ticketing revenue to support broader soccer-related or social change investments.
That is perhaps not surprising, as FIFA has faced governance challenges in the past, including issues of corruption, bribery and fraud, plus accounting practices that critics say lack transparency. Reforms have attempted to mitigate those problems, and FIFA has started programs like the FIFA Foundation, whose stated purpose is to use soccer to improve people’s lives.
Given FIFA’s background, surplus and reserves, however, the biggest question should be whether FIFA’s financial resources are being effectively used to achieve its objectives. FIFA has described its purpose with phrases like “develop the game, touch the world and build a better future.” But to me, its budgets suggest it is focused primarily on the first.
