Ticket prices have hung over the 2026 World Cup from the opening whistle, and the criticism hasn’t just come from outside.
Supporters across the United States have spent the summer complaining about the cost of getting into matches, with some seats priced in the thousands of dollars. The anger has been loud and constant, and most of it has landed squarely on the governing body and its president, Gianni Infantino.
Now there is a sense that FIFA saw it coming. A new report claims the organization’s own US-based staff pushed back against the pricing model now drawing fury — only to be overruled from above.
FIFA’s own staff warned against World Cup pricing
According to The Guardian, several FIFA employees based at the organization’s Miami office had argued for more affordable general admission seats and advised against the dynamic pricing model. They were overruled by senior leadership.
FIFA is understood to have treated the 2026 finals as a once-in-a-generation chance to maximize revenue, citing strong demand and the wealth of the American market.
Unsurprisingly, FIFA rejects these claims. It maintains that every part of the organization agreed on the strategy and that no alternative plan was ever presented.
The numbers help explain the backlash. Group-stage tickets this summer have ranged from $60 to $2,735, rising to between $2,020 and $7,875 for the final.
At Qatar 2022, the same tickets ran from $69 to $1,607 — a sharp rise in the space of four years.
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FIFA expects around $11 billion in revenue from the tournament, roughly $3 billion of it from tickets.
Infantino has defended the approach, arguing that cheaper tickets would only have been resold at far higher prices on the secondary market.
Record crowds or not, ticket pricing has become one of the defining gripes of the 2026 World Cup. And if these latest claims are accurate, FIFA had been warned about it all along — by their own people.
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