WASHINGTON:
All 104 matches of the 2026 World Cup will be “sold out,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino said on Wednesday, even though tickets are still available ahead of the tournament’s June 11 kickoff.
“The demand is there. Every match is sold out,” Infantino told CNBC.
Infantino, in an interview from President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, said that there had been 508 million ticket requests in four weeks for some seven million available tickets.
He said requests during the main sales phase in January came from more than 200 countries.
“(We’ve) never see anything like that — incredible,” said Infantino, adding that football’s global governing body has kept “some tickets back” for the last-minute sales phase that will begin in April and run until the end of the World Cup on July 19.
Infantino addressed the issue of ticket prices, described as “exorbitant” by supporters associations and which have already reached record levels on resale sites.
“I think it is because it’s in America, Canada and Mexico,” he said. “Everybody wants to be part of something special.
“Ticket prices have been fixed but you have, in the US in particular, something called dynamic prices, meaning the prices will go up or down.
“You are able as well to resell your tickets on official platforms, secondary markets, so the prices as well will go up.
“That’s part of the market we are in.”
Infantino estimated that the first 48-team World Cup would bring FIFA some $11 billion or more in revenue, adding that “every dollar” will be reinvested in football in FIFA’s 211 member countries.
He put the World Cup’s impact on the US economy at around $30 billion “in terms of tourism, catering, security investments and so on.”
Infantino estimated that in addition to seven million spectators, the World cup would also attract 20 to 30 million tourists and create “185,000 full-time jobs”.
“It’s a big impact,” he said. “I hope this impact will not just be limited to the World Cup but for the future as well.”
