May 8 – US president Donald Trump has questioned the high ticket prices at the World Cup, arguing he wouldn’t pay a four-figure World Cup ticket for a United States match.
In an interview with the New York Post, Trump, in reference to $1,000+ tickets for the United States’ opening match against Paraguay in Los Angeles at the 2026 World Cup, said that “I wouldn’t pay it either, to be honest.”
On Friday, at the time of writing, the cheapest available ticket on FIFA’s ticketing website for US – Paraguay, at the SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles, cost $1220. It was a category 3 ticket for disabled fans. The most expensive ticket cost $4,105, a front-row category 1 ticket, a new ticket category FIFA has introduced for the tournament.
Trump’s statement is another embarrassment for FIFA president Gianni Infantino who earlier in the week had once again gone to great lengths to defend the universally condemned high ticket prices at the World Cup.
“We have to look at the market – we are in the market in which entertainment is the most developed in the world. So we have to apply market rates,” Infantino said. “In the US it is permitted to resell tickets as well. So if you were to sell tickets at the price which is too low, these tickets will be resold at a much higher price,” he said.
It was the second example in a week of how far detached Infantino appears to have become from the reality of football’s stakeholders, fans and World Cup mission, after his excruciating FIFA Congress performance and his botched attempt to get Palestinian FA president Jibril Rajoub to shake the hand of the Israeli FA Vice-President Basim Sheikh Sulimanon on stage.
FIFA has received major backlash for applying dynamic pricing and setting astronomical ticket prices, with a category 1 ticket for the World Cup final costing up to $11,000, dwarfing the ticket prices from the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
At the recent FIFA Congress in Vancouver, FIFA officials declined to comment on how many tickets remain available for sale. FIFA has previously said that they have sold more than 5 million tickets. The total inventory for the supersized tournament – the first with 48 teams – is 6.5 million tickets, with FIFA projecting $3 billion revenue from ticketing and hospitality alone.
Trump added: “If people from Queens and Brooklyn and all of the people that love Donald Trump can’t go, I would be disappointed, but, you know, at the same time, it’s an amazing success,” Trump said. “I would like to be able to have the people that voted for me to be able to go.”
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