FIFA sold 6 million World Cup tickets, doubling prior tournaments. But resale prices for the US-Paraguay match fell below official last-minute rates, suggesting dynamic pricing overshot demand.
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President Trump called the 2026 World Cup the most successful in history “ticket-wise.” FIFA President Gianni Infantino said demand was “unprecedented by a factor of 10 or more.” The raw numbers support them: FIFA reported over 6 million tickets sold as of June 10, nearly double the 3.2 million for the 2022 tournament and 2.8 million for 2018.
The per-game picture tells a different story. The 2026 edition expanded to 48 teams and 104 matches, up from 32 teams and 64 matches in prior tournaments. That means roughly 40% more tickets available. By that measure, demand per game has not kept pace with the growth in supply, according to PolitiFact’s review of FIFA’s data and interviews with soccer economics experts.
“Comparing ticket sales from one World Cup to another is a false equivalency,” said Leander Schaerlaeckens, soccer columnist at The Guardian and senior sports communication lecturer at Maris University. “There are far more games and therefore tickets to be sold.”
The gap between FIFA’s official last-minute prices and the resale market reveals the real demand. For the June 12 match between the United States and Paraguay, FIFA sold tickets in its final phase at prices from $1,940 to $2,735. On FIFA’s own Marketplace–where fans can resell, buy and exchange–prices for the same match ranged from $742 to more than $13,000.
The floor price on the Marketplace is less than half of FIFA’s cheapest last-minute ticket. That suggests initial dynamic pricing, which FIFA used for the first time this year, may have overshot demand. In previous World Cups, FIFA used static pricing; the shift to dynamic means prices rise with demand and fall when interest wanes. Resellers who bought early at higher prices are now sitting on inventory that trades at a discount to the official outlet.
“The amount of lower-cost tickets was insultingly small,” said Ed Farnsworth, communications director for the Society for American Soccer History, referring to the $60 entry-level tickets that FIFA advertised. Those sold out before general public sales opened, according to a complaint lodged by Football Supporters Europe, a nonprofit serving European soccer fans.
Dynamic pricing of live events is a well-studied mechanism in secondary markets. When a platform like FIFA’s Marketplace shows a bid-ask spread so wide– $742 to $13,000 for the same match–it flags low liquidity and mispricing. The cheapest available seats on the resale market are below the cheapest seats FIFA itself is trying to sell. That is an unusual structure for an event marketed as having “unprecedented” demand.
Attorneys general in California, New York, New Jersey and Texas have opened investigations or raised concerns about FIFA’s ticket pricing tactics. The UK-based Football Supporters Europe filed a formal complaint accusing FIFA of excluding ordinary fans.
The simple read of Trump and Infantino’s claim is correct: total ticket sales are a record. The better market read examines the spread between official last-minute prices and marketplace execution. When the official seller holds inventory at $1,940+ and the same asset trades on the open market at $742, two conclusions are possible. One is that resellers are panicking and will be cleaned out. The other is that the official pricing algorithm misjudged demand elasticity and left a price umbrella that rational resellers cannot clear.
The Marketplace data currently supports the second interpretation. Tickets for matches in Los Angeles, New York and other host cities remain available on the secondary market at single-digit hours before kickoff. That contrasts with the 1994 World Cup, also hosted in the U.S., where game after game sold out to a tournament-wide attendance record of 3.5 million–at a lower total ticket count.
The thesis that FIFA overpriced group-stage tickets holds if Marketplace prices continue to trade below FIFA’s last-minute phase for the remainder of the group stage. That would keep pressure on FIFA to reduce its own prices or release more inventory at lower tiers for knockout rounds.
A break would come if knockout stage tickets–fewer games, higher stakes–see the resale spread invert, with marketplace bids rising above FIFA official prices. That would indicate that the demand glut was limited to group stage matchups with less compelling draws.
FIFA has not responded to PolitiFact’s request for comment on pricing. The next ticket sales window for the knockout rounds opens June 20.
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