The FIFA World Cup 2026 is set to take place in Canada, Mexico, and the U.S.A. from June 11 to July 19. While millions of people from the host countries and across the world want to attend the tournament, exorbitant ticket prices prevent them from doing so. Worse still, the entire public is being saddled with the billions of dollars in costs for hosting the tournament, while all the profits go to FIFA. Instead of a celebration of the game, the World Cup has turned into a party for the rich.
This year’s World Cup is set to be both the most expensive and the most lucrative sports event ever, with revenues projected to be in excess of $14 billion. Fans are being absolutely fleeced, with the Football Supporters Europe fan organization calling ticket prices “extortionate” and a “monumental betrayal”.
Toronto and Vancouver are the host cities for the World Cup for Canada, where the cheapest tickets for Canada’s opening game start at $1,300 and go up to $3,035! Meanwhile, tickets to the final have been relisted at US$2 million (almost CA$2.8million).
It is no wonder, then, that an Angus Reid poll found that 84 per cent of those who were “very interested” in watching the tournament said that the cost was too high for them to attend.
Sky-high prices also ruin the fan experience for those lucky enough to have tickets. Joe Burrow, a quarterback for the Cincinnati Bengals NFL team, described the atmosphere at the Super Bowl in 2022 as “akin to a corporate dinner party,” which is essentially what live sports have become.
The FIFdom
But it’s not just fans attending the game who are being gouged: the entire public is on the hook, with FIFA forcing host countries to sign extortionate deals to host the games. In these deals, host cities are responsible for all costs of the tournament, from providing private motorcades for FIFA VIPs, to policing, to protecting FIFA’s and its sponsors’ brands.
Police operations in Toronto and Vancouver are expected to be among the largest and most sophisticated that either city has ever seen. Vancouver authorities expect the cost of police deployment in their city alone to be more than $1 billion!
Working class people who live or work near World Cup sites will experience “significant impacts on their ability to travel freely, with street closings and security zones,” all without being able to experience any of the benefits of the tournament itself.
Perhaps most egregiously of all, host cities are on the hook to police FIFA’s own brand within a two-kilometre radius “exclusion zone” around World Cup arenas! In these zones, “the city must regulate signage, remove competing branding and limit non-affiliated vendors” to create a “curated, sponsor‑only landscape” for FIFA and its monopolist sponsors, such as Visa, Coca-Cola and the oil company Saudi Aramco.
With hospital ERs closing due to underfunding, you will at least be happy to know that public resources are being spent on ensuring that your local pub doesn’t use the terms “World Cup” or “FIFA” on a sandwich board!
All told, costs to governments are estimated to be at least $82 million per game, though even that is likely an underestimate. While governments are trying to sell the huge costs of hosting the World Cup by promising $1 billion in tourist spending, as Jules Boykoff, a professor of politics and government states, it’s “Usually the big sponsors who are raking in the extra cash, not local businesses.” It’s no surprise, then, that 12 of the past 14 World Cups since 1966 have resulted in financial losses for host countries. Given all this, it’s convenient that the host city agreements also indemnify FIFA against any losses from protests or strikes!
All this public largess is at the behest of an organization that has a sordid history of corruption and scandal. While FIFA bills itself as a “non-profit,” there is very little oversight and millions of dollars that are supposed to go back to regional organizations have been misappropriated by officials. An ethics probe by former U.S. attorney Michael Garcia found the organizational culture of FIFA to be based on “greed, secrecy, and corruption.”
Capitalism is ruining sports. As one podcaster put it, “The World Cup is meant to be the people’s tournament. The sport that belongs to everyone. The game played in the favelas and the council estates and the parks and the schools.” In order for working class people to enjoy the “beautiful game,” as it is known, we need to take it back into our hands (or feet).
