FIFA’s Billions: where your World Cup ticket money goes

**Sam Fenwick** (0:02)
Five hundred million people applied for tickets for the 2026 FIFA Football World Cup, but there were only seven million seats. I'm Sam Fenwick at the bar in Hotel Football in the shadow of Old Trafford in Manchester here in the UK.
A stadium on one side, a hotel built by former players on the other. The walls are covered with photographs of footballers from around the world, stars who draw fans and money from every corner of the planet. Football and business side by side here in one place, which is rather the point, because this summer the game goes global. 48 teams, 104 matches across the United States, Canada and Mexico, the biggest World Cup ever.

**Matt Lines** (0:53)
Hi there, what can I get you?

**Amir Somoggi** (0:54)
Hi, can I have a pint of lager please?

**Sam Fenwick** (0:56)
FIFA is the biggest club in the world, and most of the world won't be watching in the stadiums, they'll be in places like this, a screen, a crowd and their team. FIFA expects to make nearly nine billion dollars from the tournament. So who's paying for it? And where does all that money go?
That's Business Daily from the BBC World Service. Today, we're following the money behind the FIFA 2026 World Cup.
So FIFA expects to make nearly nine billion dollars from this tournament and that number has grown every single World Cup. Each tournament makes more money than the last.
But before we get into where that nine billion comes from and where it goes, let's find out a bit more about FIFA, football's world governing body. It was founded more than 120 years ago as a non-profit association. But what does that actually mean? Matt Lines is here and he can explain.

**Matt Lines** (1:49)
Yes, so FIFA was founded in 1904 and headquartered in Switzerland in 1936
Where it's registered, as you mentioned, as a non-profit association. Which means in Swiss law it doesn't have shareholders and it can't distribute profits to its members. But that doesn't mean it doesn't make any money. It absolutely does. It just has to spend it or at least say it's going to spend it on football. Here's FIFA president Gianni Infantino speaking in the build up to these games.

**Gianni Infantino** (2:17)
The commercial programme for this World Cup is unfolding extremely well. Revenues are above expectations and this allows us to increase our investments in football development.

**Matt Lines** (2:30)
And on its website, FIFA points to something that it calls the FIFA Forward Programme, a development fund that, according to FIFA, put $2.8 billion into grassroots football across its 211 member associations between 2016 and 2022

**Sam Fenwick** (2:46)
So let's look at where that income comes from. Well, it is mainly you. FIFA makes its money every four years and its first income stream comes from the sale of tickets, the face value price the one FIFA sets.
It says 500 million people tried to buy tickets to this tournament. It had 7 million tickets to sell. That's 70 applications for every single seat. Here's FIFA president again, this time talking back in December last year.

**Gianni Infantino** (3:17)
In 100 years of history of the World Cup, FIFA has sold 44 million tickets in total. So in two weeks for the next World Cup next year, we could have filled 300 years of World Cups.

**Sam Fenwick** (3:33)
So it's fair to say that most people who wanted a ticket didn't get one and those who did found a price tag they probably weren't expecting. A category one seat at the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar cost $1,600.
The same category ticket for the final this year, $11,000. A 585% increase in four years. For the first time in World Cup history, FIFA used dynamic pricing. Not a fixed price printed months in advance, but a price that moves up mostly based on demand on the teams playing on how close you are to the match. Think of it like an airline ticket. If you buy early, you'll pay less, wait and you'll pay whatever the algorithm decides your worth. Mark DiDonato teaches Sport Management at Florida State University and he's been following FIFA's pricing strategy for this tournament very closely.

**Mark DiDonato** (4:30)
The dynamic pricing allows them to raise and lower the prices based on demand essentially. So they were able to set up team tiering, for example, and that was for matches that involved little higher demand teams like the US or Mexico being priced significantly higher from the start.
And so some of the more neutral group stage matches are going to start in the lower 100 or 200 dollars. Whereas some of the tiered stuff for the United States and for Mexico and Canada are actually much higher, you know, looking at possibly a thousand dollars for an entry level ticket for these first round games.