FIFA’s decision to price some tickets “dynamically” for the 2026 World Cup across North America has drawn the ire of some fans and now Zohran Mamdani. The New York City mayor-in-waiting launched a “Game over Greed” petition recently, calling on FIFA to reverse the decision and institute a price cap on ticket resales.
I don’t like having to defend FIFA, which is a rotten organization. But I think Mamdani—who never saw a price control he didn’t like—is misguided on this.
FIFA’s World Cup is the most popular sporting event in the world, with hundreds of thousands to millions of visitors typically flocking to host countries every four years to watch games live. Billions more tune in from home. This makes allocating tickets for the World Cup extraordinarily complex in an easy year.
But the 2026 tournament will also be the first to feature 48 teams, up from 32, making coordinating across countries of various levels of development and income even harder. Next summer’s 104 matches will be spread between 16 host cities in Canada, the United States, and Mexico, with only 18 countries confirmed to have qualified so far.
Though FIFA is nominally a non-profit, it still wants to maximize revenues to redistribute funds to further the sport across the globe, albeit subject to political and reputational constraints. The global football governing body will want the tournament to project success by avoiding half-full stadiums, growing the game’s popularity in North America, and demonstrating a degree of equity in the ticketing process to allow wider access.
FIFA’s ticket allocation mechanism reflects all these goals by selling in tranches. Phase 1 lets Visa card holders apply to purchase up to 4 tickets “blind”—i.e. without knowing which teams they will see. Those drawn in the pre-sale lottery are given specific time slots to decide whether to exercise their purchase rights.
In terms of pricing, all tickets have an initial face value set by FIFA (group-stage seats start at $60 and “premium” tickets for the final start up to $6,730). Some tickets will always be sold at these reserve prices. But what Mamdani objects to is FIFA’s announcement that most ticket prices will be “variable.” If it becomes clear a game or seating category is in high demand, their prices can rise.
For the first time, FIFA will mimic the sort of dynamic pricing norms seen in concerts and U.S. pro sports, where prices fluctuate in real-time to match supply and demand. In this case, prices won’t be set entirely by algorithm but will still involve a degree of human judgment. One result is the same: some fans could purchase tickets at vastly different prices to other fans for similar seats, depending on the strength of demand at that time.
In the coming months, FIFA will run a second drawing for blind ticket sales open to all applicants, and after the World Cup Final Draw in December 2025, FIFA will run a third round with known tournament matchups and locations. By that stage, fans will know exactly which teams play where. Because of dynamic pricing, prices may be significantly higher for the most in-demand matches (especially for those, say, featuring a home nation or popular team). Importantly, FIFA will operate an official resale platform for World Cup 2026 tickets too. This allows fans to resell their tickets in a safe, authorized way, rather than through unofficial scalpers. In the United States and Canada, where resale of event tickets is generally legal and uncapped, the official platform is expected to allow market-driven resale prices, which could fluctuate even more.
Media commentary tends to emphasize the downsides of all this for consumers—the unpredictability of prices and potential for them to black entry for poorer fans. Yet there are clear economic benefits to a system of dynamic pricing with the opportunity to resell at uncapped prices too.
Blind Buying and Scarcity
Stadium seats are finite and no price can change that. Scarcity means rationing, and prices can do it. The virtue of market prices, then, is to sort access to those who value the experience most highly, which is at least reasonably proxied by the highest willingness to pay.
The problem is that buyers don’t currently know which teams will play where, let alone make it to later rounds, so the same ticket purchased could end up being a high-tier match like England vs Brazil or a bout between footballing minnows, like New Zealand vs. Uzbekistan. Demand varies by teams, city, tournament stage, and national income too.
This all makes it very difficult to know the eventual price that clears that market or maximizes revenue. “Optimal” prices evolve as match details become clear, so it’s entirely sensible to have a pricing mechanism that can vary with demand and an official secondary market with open pricing to facilitate resale.
Consider alternatives to this form of allocation. Suppose there’s just a flat ticket price for all group matches in a particular city. If the city and fixture date is extremely popular, there will be a huge unmet demand for tickets at the set price. These shortages will represent FIFA leaving revenue on the table. This will be exacerbated if, as details become clear about the fixture, the match becomes more desirable still.
The major cost here is misallocation. As an England supporter, I’d be willing to pay a high price for a knockout game to see my country play anywhere in the U.S. But if prices in the secondary market are capped, and the current, say, American holder of a seat is unable to trade at a higher price despite my much stronger desire to see the game, then we are both worse off. And the match will be marginally worse off too: the atmosphere in the stadium for an England-Germany match would be more raucous with English and German fans than being wholly viewed by locals or randoms from across the globe.
Variable Pricing Goes Both Ways
Under variable pricing, prices can go down as well as up. Mamdani complains FIFA “can raise prices, in real time, depending on how much profit they think they can make off of us.” Yet unlike other algorithmic pricing technologies, FIFA’s strategy doesn’t “know” anything about individuals per se. It prices only off aggregate demand, and if history is any sign, consumers might reap immense benefits from falling prices.
Consider FIFA’s Club World Cup semifinal earlier this year. Three days before the match, standard admission stood at $473.90. By morning of, tickets were down almost 95% (selling for $27.90), and by gates open, New Yorkers could’ve grabbed tickets for $13.40. As The New York Times reported, that’s cheaper than a stadium beer ($14).
How does this make sense? Contrary to the prevailing framing, FIFA and fans aren’t enemies on prices. FIFA can only sell at prices fans pay, and fans can only buy at prices FIFA accepts. As the moment draws near and details of the fixtures crystallize, some games will look undesirable. At that point the price at which it makes sense to sell will fall. Empty stands don’t look good, and electric audiences drive food, drink, and merch sales.
The same logic applies in resale markets for certain matches. Resellers who don’t want the tickets they are holding are likely to bleed value as kickoff nears for group games since there’s less time to find a buyer and a smaller chance for a profitable flip. The ticket price time decays as the event draws near. Often, fans that wait will get a ticket for a song.
Does that mean early fans are punished? No more than early iPhone adopters who paid a premium before prices fell. Fans who buy early buy certainty—a guaranteed seat at a match that might become a must-see. For the biggest diehards and fans with the highest opportunity costs, that security might just be worth the premium.
Ironically, since opportunity cost scales with wages, it’s the highest earners who’re probably most willing to pay upfront. For Mamdani who rails against the ultra-rich not paying their fair share, dynamic pricing might just be the market solution he’s looking for.
FIFA’s Floor Price
Part of the problem here is just marketing. In the primary market, FIFA has set a $60 floor, leaving some fans angry that $60 tickets could be “marked up” in the dynamic market. But when adjusting for inflation, tickets haven’t sold that cheaply, on average, since 1994. This is what often happens for sports events or concerts: sellers like FIFA actually discount the face value to ensure strong attendance and then the dynamic aspect allows them to increase revenue as demand becomes more certain.
With secondary markets, a ticket’s face value matters for one thing only: who reaps more money from a ticket sale. Low face values shift profit to resellers but dynamic pricing lets FIFA capture more for itself and the game. In a world with flat primary market prices and secondary market caps, black markets would inevitably serve as popular and lucrative playgrounds to capitalize on uncertainty. When sellers are willing to sell and buyers to buy for a given price, they will just find a way. Case studies in prohibition, wars on drugs, and illicit gambling rings—where prices are capped at $0—make for compelling enough demonstrations. FIFA sanctioning a secondary market platform that people can trust just turns a black market into a legal and transparent one.
Mamdani calls uncapped resale “yet another method of gatekeeping the game.” But surely the true gatekeeping happens when two parties are blocked from trading at a price they agree upon, not when they’re allowed to. With resale price caps, middling fans who bought early might actually become stuck with tickets to Spain vs. Brazil when someone else wants them more. When a diehard fan is willing to pony up and a fair-weather fan would just prefer the cash, blocking the trade is gatekeeping against the better allocation of the ticket.
Critics should remember that “gatekeeping”—whether by prices or anything else—is a symptom of living in a world of inevitable scarcity. When the total number of seats available doesn’t change, the same maximum number of fans will be let in whatever they pay. Conversely, the same number of fans will be shut out. You can’t grant tickets to everyone who wants them at a price everyone can afford. The Mamdani method of inflexible prices fills stands with people not as bothered about being there or leaves seats empty for less significant matches.
FIFA deserves a lot of criticism, but its pricing proposal at least acknowledges the real-world trade-offs that this complex event must navigate.
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I like learning economics.