World cup controversy
The World Cup, the biggest and most prestigious international soccer tournament, is coming to Los Angeles (LA) in the summer of 2026. Every four years, 38 teams from across the world come together to compete in this month-long tournament, the most watched event in the world. Controversy has surrounded the tickets for the World Cup, due to their high prices and complex systems of release.
The World Cup, organized by the International Federation of Association Football (FIFA), has been a landmark in sporting history since its beginning in 1930 and has risen to become the biggest recurring event in history. In the years before each tournament, qualifying rounds select the main 38 teams featured to play, with the 2026 World Cup adding an additional ten teams, bringing the total number competing up to 48. After this qualifying round, the selected teams move to the group stage in which they are sectioned into groups of four with two teams advancing to a knockout stage. From the knockout stage and onwards, the tournament functions in a standard bracket style with teams competing for the top three spots.
This year, the tournament will take place across 16 North American cities, with eight of the matches taking place here in Los Angeles (LA). For fans in the LA area to attend the matches, it has become an elaborate exercise to secure a ticket–at least one at a reasonable price. The initial tickets for nosebleeds in the lowest level match would run a buyer $560, which doesn’t take into account more important matches or a better view of the game itself.
The only direct way to get tickets is through either a VISA or Verizon presale, which is a lottery system where members can apply into the drawing. If they are neither a Verizon member or Visa card holder and are not chosen in the lottery, fans can try a later ticket draw or a random selection draw before the tickets are widely released on a first-come first-served basis.
Dynamic pricing used by FIFA alters tickets based on the expected popularity of each match to increase the baseline ticket price. Instead of a set price for certain matches or seats, popularity factors change the ticket prices to make them exponentially more expensive. With this dynamic pricing, starting prices of tickets for more average games are in the hundreds, with the finals going for over $6500. Even with this steep price tag, the competitiveness to get the tickets will make them hard to acquire.
Special ways to get tickets like ‘Right to Buy’ (RTB) tokens give fans better security in buying their ticket with an increased price tag. For hundreds of dollars, you can buy one of these RTB tokens to have first access to tickets when they go on sale. For the more important matches, like the finals, these tokens have a starting price of $999. It is important to note that the price spent to gain access to the match tickets is not put towards the ticket price themselves. In other words, people who have spent upwards of $1000 to get a token–to ensure they could buy tickets–will still have to pay full price for tickets once they go on sale. In addition, FIFA has recently announced that only the most expensive categories of tickets would be available to RTB token holders, not giving them complete access to the tickets. Many had already bought the tokens under the assumption that they could use them to buy affordable tickets, an opportunity no longer exists.
While the sport of soccer is widely enjoyed throughout the world, it seems that these steep ticket prices will vastly influence the way the in-person audience is formed at next year’s event. The complicated rounds of pre-sale in addition to the large price is shaping the audience to be one of wealth and making exclusivity play a large factor in whether or not fans are able to obtain their tickets. Looking at the individual level, one student trying to acquire tickets, Diego Olivera (’26), shares his views on the upcoming World Cup.
“It's overcrowded. People are gonna try to hop the gate,” Olivera states. “The prices are also too high, people aren't going to want to pay it, so they'd rather take the risk and try to hop anything that they could to get in.”
In all, the state of ticketing for the World Cup is in a unique place, with genuine fans going through a convoluted process to try to get the most reasonable available tickets and those with money being able to bypass the system nearly entirely. Looking towards the future of the World Cup, it is hard to ignore how the ticketing in the upcoming tournament will affect those able to enjoy the experience going forward. It seems that the ability to attend the games, as an average fan, is becoming increasingly out of reach, becoming skewed towards the wealthy and those who could meet the exclusive criteria set by FIFA.