{"id":459014,"date":"2026-05-20T21:09:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T21:09:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/459014\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T21:09:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T21:09:09","slug":"everything-but-the-soccer-why-world-cup-hype-has-been-drowned-out-before-kickoff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/459014\/","title":{"rendered":"Everything but the soccer: Why World Cup hype has been drowned out before kickoff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jim McCarthy thinks FIFA got this wrong from the start.<\/a> The ticketing expert has seen how soccer is sold correctly. He\u2019s also seen how it\u2019s been done very, very wrong. This is certainly closer to the latter.<\/p>\n

The raw data looks bad here. Ticket prices have fluctuated since they were first made available at the end of last year. But as of earlier this week, the average price for a group-stage game on the resale market was $550. They max out, for the initial round, north of $2,000.<\/a><\/p>\n

“Let’s say you want to maximize the revenue of an event. The game is to find that absolutely optimal price point where the demand and the supply meet. That’s the best you can do. Because if you go past that, then people begin to drop out of the market,” McCarthy explained to\u00a0GOAL.<\/p>\n

Now, it is worth noting that North America is a very different place from, say, Qatar. But astronomical ticket prices have, of course, priced out many local fans. The notion that football is a democracy is, in all honesty, fairly outdated at this point. The World Cup, in particular, is far more corporate than it used to be. And yes, in America, things tend to be more expensive.<\/p>\n

But simply blaming this all on \u201ccapitalism\u201d and saying, as Gianni Infantino pointed out last month<\/a>, that Americans are simply \u201cwilling\u201d to pay more to see events, is a bit narrow – especially when you consider that the United States is just one of 48 teams playing in the tournament. Sure, there will be plenty of USMNT fans who have paid high prices for friendlies, other soccer matches, or even the 2024 Copa America. But they are still in the minority, and very few would have had to pay prices quite like these.<\/p>\n

The line from FIFA is that ticket sales are at an all-time high, and that they have eclipsed the numbers from 1994. And it is true that this will be the most well-attended World Cup ever. But there are also 104 games across 16 cities. The smallest stadium, BMO Field in Toronto, seats 45,000. The average capacity is 65,000. There are a lot of seats to fill, and a lot of content to consume. Of course, the raw data was always going to go one way.<\/p>\n

And FIFA, no doubt, can hang its hat on that. The extent of its role in city-by-city planning can, and should, be questioned. But it has put the right pieces in the right places to ensure there are a lot of available seats. Filling them, at the right price, though, has been anything but simple.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Jim McCarthy thinks FIFA got this wrong from the start. The ticketing expert has seen how soccer is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,289,308,93,778,61,60,2628,387,812,4018],"class_list":["post-459014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-canada","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-features","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-mexico","tag-opinion","tag-usa","tag-world-cup"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}