FIFA has announced “more affordable” tickets for all 104 matches at next year’s World Cup after an outcry over pricing.
The cheapest tickets will now be on offer from $60 (£45) as part of a new “Supporter Entry Tier” which will be available specifically to supporters of qualified teams.
However, only 10% of participating member association’s allocated tickets will fall under this most affordable category.
As a result, the number of $60 tickets for each game is likely to be in the hundreds, rather than thousands.
Supporter value tier prices will apply to 40% of their tickets with the remaining 50% being split evenly between supporter standard tier and supporter premier tier.
Ronan Evain, the executive director of Football Supporter’s Europe (FSE), a group that represents the interests of supporters in European football, said the group was “looking at the FIFA announcement as nothing more than an appeasement tactic due to the global negative backlash”.
He added: “This shows that FIFA’s ticketing policy is not set in stone, was decided in a rush, and without proper consultation – including with FIFA’s own member associations.”
While he welcomed FIFA’s “seeming recognition of the damage its original plans were to cause”, he insisted “the revisions do not go far enough to reconcile” the harm done.
England and Scotland have qualified for next year’s World Cup. Pics: Reuters
In a statement, FIFA said: “With demand in the current sales phase achieving 20 million ticket requests, FIFA has confirmed that fans of the national teams that have qualified for the FIFA World Cup 2026 will benefit from a dedicated ticket pricing tier, which has been designed to make following their teams on football’s greatest stage more affordable.
“The newly introduced Supporter Entry Tier will be available at the fixed price of USD 60 per ticket for each of the 104 matches, including the final.”
FIFA had been urged to halt World Cup ticket sales after it emerged countries’ most loyal fans faced paying “extortionate” prices for tickets, with the cheapest for the final coming in at over £3,000.
The cheaper tickets, which will be made available for every game at the tournament in North America, will be given to the national federations whose teams are playing.
It will then be up to those federations to decide how to distribute them to loyal fans who have likely attended previous games at home and on the road.
FIFA caving into criticism like rarely before
This is FIFA caving into criticism like rarely before under Gianni Infantino. It has still not shut down the outcry at the cost of going to the World Cup.
“We have listened to feedback,” a senior FIFA official acknowledged to Sky News.
Suddenly cutting World Cup ticket prices amid a growing fan backlash is a significant climbdown.
FIFA admitted it got it wrong by pricing tickets too high.
Groups, including England’s Football Supporter’s Association, said last week it was “scandalous” its cheapest group stage tickets in the United States would cost about £165 ($265) and the cheapest for the final £3,130.
Now, FIFA says there will be $60 (£45) tickets for every match. The US-Canada-Mexico bid book ahead of the 2018 FIFA vote said the cheapest tickets would be $21.
“This new category is the right thing to do,” the FIFA official close to talks said.
But only 10% of the allocation for each team will be made available at the new cheaper entry point.
So for England’s opener against Croatia, there could only be 750 tickets at £45. The Dallas stadium has a capacity of 94,000.
It will be for the FAs to work out who should receive these cheapest tickets from their fan base.
The men’s World Cup is FIFA’s main source of income every four years – with revenue of $13bn (£9.75bn) across the 2023-26 cycle.
It helps to fund expanding women’s and youth tournaments as well as draws, conferences and award ceremonies.
And this U-turn overshadowed one of their glitziest nights of the year – the FIFA Best awards in Qatar.
That was one FIFA event supporters couldn’t buy a ticket to – for any price.
The news shows how the organisation is continuing its weeks-long move to back away from using dynamic pricing for all 2026 World Cup tickets.
FIFA did not specify exactly why it so dramatically changed strategy, but said the lower prices are “designed to further support travelling fans following their national teams across the tournament”.
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Prices for England’s fixtures at the tournament in the USA, Canada and Mexico were revealed last week, with the cheapest ticket for the final – should England, one of the home nations reach that stage – costing between $4,185 (£3,120) and $8,680 (£6,471) for members of the England Supporters’ Travel Club.
Outrage over such high prices was made worse due to co-hosts having pledged eight years ago to have hundreds of thousands of $21 (£15.64) tickets.
In another climbdown, FIFA has also announced that fans applying through the participating member association’s tickets allocation whose teams do not advance to the knockout phase will have the administrative fee waived when refunds are processed for unsuccessful applications.
Fan anger had intensified when it became clear that fans who wanted to reserve a ticket for all of their team’s potential games – through the final – would not get refunded if their teams didn’t make it to the final until after the tournament.
The World Cup in North America will be the first edition that features 48 teams – up from 32 – and is expected to earn FIFA at least $10bn (£7.4bn) in revenue.
