Who’s Really Paying for This Year’s World Cup?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**David Gura** (0:09)
The 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off today in Mexico City. Oh my God.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:18)
The biggest World Cup ever.

**Vanessa Perdomo** (0:20)
I never thought that I would actually be going to FIFA World Cup.

**SPEAKER_5** (0:23)
The World Cup is in my backyard.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:25)
In one way or another, I am going to be a part of it.

**David Gura** (0:28)
The tournament is expected to be historic.

**Vanessa Perdomo** (0:31)
It's by far the largest on a million different scales, right? On the fact that there's 48 teams instead of 32, 104 matches instead of 60 or so. So on that scale, it is going to be the biggest sporting event the world has ever seen outside the Olympics.

**David Gura** (0:50)
Vanessa Perdomo covers the business of sports for Bloomberg. She says this year's Cup also marks the first time FIFA's matches will be spread across three host countries, Mexico, Canada and the United States.

**Vanessa Perdomo** (1:02)
I think they like being able to say we have the biggest tournament in the world. This is the biggest sporting event ever. I think the way they will try and frame it is that we're getting more people involved. But I think the main thing we're going to see is more games, is more revenue. FIFA takes all the revenue from every single game that happens. So it's hard to say that's not the end goal there.

**David Gura** (1:26)
But that increase in revenue could come along with headaches for fans.

**SPEAKER_5** (1:30)
There is growing backlash tonight over the cost of ticket prices for the World Cup. Why are the World Cup 2026 tickets so expensive?

**SPEAKER_3** (1:39)
Flight's expensive, yeah. Hotel's expensive. Food's expensive. And then FIFA said, wait, let's make the tickets crazy, too.

**Andrew Zimbalist** (1:49)
Some of the ticket prices for the final match at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, some of them are going now for 15 or 20,000 dollars per ticket.

**David Gura** (2:00)
That's economist Andrew Zimbalist. And the countries hosting the matches also face some big hurdles. Who stands to profit the most? And with ticket prices for marquee games in the tens of thousands of dollars, who is the people's game for?

**Andrew Zimbalist** (2:15)
Well, there is this mythology out there that FIFA uses and that the IOC uses for Olympics. And the mythology is that since the entire world is fascinated by the games and people around the entire world will be watching the games streaming or on television, that there's a tremendous amount of exposure that your city gets from hosting the games. If there are a couple of billion people around the world who are tuned in to the game, then those couple of billion people will learn something about your city.
Well, they might or they might not.

**David Gura** (2:52)
I'm David Gura and this is The Big Take from Bloomberg News. Today on the show, FIFA's big bet to turbo charge the 2026 World Cup to make it the most profitable World Cup in history. Who's getting rich and who's footing the bill?
So the World Cup is here. I'm curious if you're going to go and if there are any matches that are like top of mind for you that you're most excited about.

**Vanessa Perdomo** (3:16)
Well, I am going to go. I'm going to the first match in Philadelphia this weekend, which I'm really excited about. But also the first match at MetLife against Brazil, Morocco, I think is going to be one of the best big games of the group stage. It's going to be amazing.

**David Gura** (3:30)
This year's World Cup is FIFA's biggest ever with 50% more teams and more than 60% more matches. I asked Bloomberg's Vanessa Perdomo for her read on why FIFA decided to expand this year's tournament.
Why did they make those changes? Is it just purely opportunistic, like they could add more games, more participants, or was there a need to do that this time around?

**Vanessa Perdomo** (3:50)
There definitely wasn't a need for it. I don't think anyone in the soccer landscape had asked for it. The players certainly hadn't asked for it. The federations didn't ask for it either. You already have players who are, their seasons are really long anyway. International soccer is a huge timeframe.
It wasn't needed. A lot of people liked the way the last few tournaments worked, but this isn't the first time we've seen an expansion. We see expansions throughout time and I think that it was just an opportunistic thing where they thought, let's add more people in and there's both sides to it. Now you're letting a new nations, teams who have never been here before, which is really exciting and I think that's part of what the World Cup is about. But it was really opportunistic from FIFA to decide, we want to expand the tournament. This is what we're seeing with the Club World Cup added last year. It's just adding more tournaments to add more revenue for FIFA.