The beautiful game has a decidedly ugly price tag. Fifa, football’s global governing body, is facing an investigation over its World Cup ticket pricing structure, and British fans, long accustomed to being fleeced, are finally baying for blood. As the Chief Financial Editor, I see this not as a sporting issue but as a textbook case of monopoly pricing and regulatory failure.
Let’s start with the numbers. For the 2026 World Cup, which will be held across the United States, Canada, and Mexico, the cheapest tickets for the final are priced at $1,111. For the group stages, you’re looking at a minimum of $245. These are not premium seats; these are the scraps from the table. When you factor in travel, accommodation, and the sheer hassle of a transatlantic crossing, a British family of four could easily drop £5,000 to watch a single game. That is not a holiday; that is a capital outflow.
The investigation, launched by the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority, centres on whether Fifa has abused its dominant position. The governing body is, after all, a monopoly. It controls the World Cup, the most valuable sporting event on the planet. And like any monopolist, it sets prices where marginal revenue equals marginal cost, which in this case is virtually zero for an additional ticket. The result is what economists call “rent extraction.” Fifa is pocketing the consumer surplus.
British fans, organised under the Football Supporters’ Association, are demanding transparency. They want to know how tickets are allocated, why hospitality packages are so exorbitant, and whether there is any secondary market manipulation. They have a point. The secondary market for World Cup tickets is a murky swamp of touting and algorithmic scalping. Fifa claims it uses a random ballot system, but the odds of success are worse than finding a yield in a negative-rate bond.
The government, ever eager to intervene, has thrown its weight behind the investigation. The culture secretary has grandly declared that “fans should not be priced out of the game they love.” But as a fiscal conservative, I find this paternalistic. If fans are willing to pay these prices, who is the state to stop them? The market is clearing, albeit at a level that makes Premier League ticket prices look like a bargain.
Yet the deeper issue is one of governance. Fifa is a non-profit, but its executives live like oligarchs. The organisation has a history of corruption, and the current president, Gianni Infantino, has been criticised for his lavish spending. The ticket pricing scandal is just the latest symptom of a culture that treats fans as revenue streams, not stakeholders.
From a macroeconomic perspective, this matters. The World Cup generates billions in revenue, but much of it is repatriated to Fifa’s headquarters in Zurich, not the host nations. For the UK, the high cost of attending is a drag on consumer spending. Every pound spent on a ticket to the 2026 final is a pound not spent in the local pub or on the high street. It is, in effect, a tax on football fandom.
The investigation is likely to drag on for months, possibly years. The outcome? A few token gestures: perhaps a cap on hospitality prices, a more transparent ballot, or a fine that Fifa will pay out of its $4 billion cash reserves. But the fundamental economics will not change. As long as demand exceeds supply, tickets will command a premium. And as long as Fifa holds the monopoly, it will extract that premium.
For British fans, the lesson is simple: football is a business, and the World Cup is its most lucrative product. If you want to watch Messi lift the trophy, be prepared to pay. But do not expect any favours from a governing body that treats you as a source of revenue, not a partner. That is the bottom line.
