December 29 – FIFA has announced a record breaking 150 million ticket requests for the 2026 World Cup in the USA, Mexico and Canada. Fans from more than 200 countries have applied at the  halfway point of the ongoing Random Selection Draw ticketing phase that opened December 11.

With criticism of the ticket pricing having reached fever pitch before Christmas – the cheapest ticket for the final in New Jersey is £3,119 – the laws of supply and demand and FIFA’s primarily dynamic ticketing (prices fluctuate in real-time based on market demand) point to no significant buyer issues with ticket prices that are up to three times the prices paid for tickets to the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

The proof will be whether once the random draw has completed on January 13, those with winning tickets can actually pay for them.

FIFA says the random draw is oversubscribed more than 30 times “based on verified individual credit card numbers submitted with each ticket application. The demand also represents 3.4 times more than the overall number of spectators who have attended the 964 matches that make up all 22 editions of the competition combined since 1930.”

Speaking at the World Sports Summit in Dubai today (Monday), FIFA president Gianni Infantino said: “We have six to seven million tickets on sale and in 15 days we received 150 million ticket requests… So 10 million ticket requests every single day. It shows how powerful the World Cup is.

“In the almost 100 years of the World Cup, FIFA has sold 44 million tickets in total. So, in two weeks we could have filled 300 years of World Cups. Imagine that. This is absolutely crazy.”

For those fans who have followed and supported their national teams globally and – perhaps most importantly – have created the passion, energy and spectacle that makes a World Cup a truly global event, the ‘crazy’ is still in the ticket pricing.

FIFA have partially addressed that with a limited number of tickets available for £45 for all 105 matches for Participating Member Association (PMA) supporters. Those fans will have to be verified by their national FAs before they can apply, though the realist is that these ‘supporter’ tickets will be in the 100s rather than 1000s.

“What’s crucial is that the revenues that are generated from this are going back to the game all over the world,” said Infantino.

“Without Fifa there would be no football in 150 countries in the world. There is football because, and thanks to, these revenues we generate with, and from, the World Cup which we reinvest all over the world.”

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