The beautiful game has a new opponent: the regulator. Fifa, football’s governing body, is under investigation for its ticketing practices, with UK fans facing eye-watering costs for the 2026 World Cup. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has launched a probe into whether Fifa has abused its dominant position, leaving supporters to pay inflated prices for a seat at the world’s biggest sporting event.
This is not a penalty kick. It is a calculated raid on the consumer’s wallet. The economics are simple: monopoly power plus inelastic demand equals higher prices. And when the product is the World Cup, demand is about as elastic as a brick wall. The CMA’s investigation centres on allegations that Fifa has restricted the supply of tickets to drive up prices, a classic strategy straight out of the monopoly playbook.
Let’s talk numbers. For the 2026 tournament, which will be co-hosted by the United States, Canada, and Mexico, tickets for group-stage matches are expected to cost between £50 and £200. But those are just the face values. The real pain comes from the secondary market, where touts and agencies are already marking up prices by 300% or more. A ticket that costs £150 from Fifa could set you back £600 on the resale market. That is not supply and demand. That is market failure.
And it gets worse. UK fans face additional costs from currency fluctuations and travel expenses. Sterling has been under pressure against the dollar, with the pound trading around $1.24 this week. Every cent of depreciation adds to the cost of a ticket priced in dollars. For a fan planning to attend three group matches, that could mean an extra £100 or more purely on exchange rate losses.
The broader economic backdrop makes this even more painful. Inflation in the UK remains stubbornly above the Bank of England’s 2% target, at 3.2% as of February. That means household budgets are already squeezed from all sides. And now, the dream of seeing England in the World Cup comes with a price tag that rivals a mortgage payment.
Fifa, of course, argues that ticket prices are set to ensure access while covering the massive costs of hosting the tournament. The 2026 World Cup will be the largest in history, with 48 teams playing 104 matches. Infrastructure costs have ballooned to an estimated £40 billion across the three host nations. But the taxpayer is already shouldering much of that burden in the US, Canada, and Mexico. Meanwhile, Fifa sits on reserves of over £3 billion. It can afford to be more generous.
The CMA’s investigation is a welcome intervention, but it is no panacea. The regulator can impose fines of up to 10% of a company’s global turnover, but that is small change for an organisation with Fifa’s financial muscle. What is needed is structural reform: forcing Fifa to sell tickets directly to fans at fair prices, with strict limits on resale markups.
Until then, the market will continue to fail. And UK fans will be left to decide whether a once-in-a-lifetime experience is worth the lifetime of debt. For many, the answer will be no. And that is a tragedy for the sport.
As a financial journalist, I have watched this script play out before. The scalping of tickets is no different from the scalping of bonds. In both cases, a middleman exploits a captive audience. The only difference is that with World Cup tickets, the emotional stakes are higher. And the cost, for too many, is simply too high.
