This week, I decided it might be nice, as a Brit living in New York City, to go with my partner and watch the New York City Ballet performance of The Nutcracker during the festive period.
Then I saw the prices on Ticketmaster. Across 14 consecutive performances between Friday, December 12 and Sunday, December 21, resale for the “cheap” tickets offered an average price of $263 (£197) per person for two tickets seated together. For the most expensive showing, this soars to $454. It brought to mind something I often observe when perusing stories on Instagram, where I follow the travels and activities of my New York City friends: some Americans appear to have a lot of money… or borrow a lot of money. Either way, they spend a lot of money.
I am, in no way, an expert in the economics of ballet — or Americans — but by now, I have learned a thing or two about the normalization of sky-high prices across premium entertainment in premium markets in the United States. Each year, we see staggeringly high numbers for the average price of a Super Bowl ticket. A week before this year’s Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles, CBS reported an average StubHub resale price of $8,076, with face value tickets ranging from $950 to $7,500.
Fans queuing to enter the Caesars Superdome for Super Bowl LIX(Michael DeMocker/Getty Images)
Following the fifth game of the World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays, data from SeatGeek, Major League Baseball’s official ticketing partner, showed that tickets for Game 6 at Rogers Center had an average resale price of $1,857. In the event it reached a decisive Game 7, the average resale price, at that stage, was $2,524.
Even regular-season games in leading markets can be expensive. As of Thursday this week, standard admission for the New York Knicks and Los Angeles Lakers home games across their next seven games could not be purchased on Ticketmaster for less than $200 and $100 respectively. Many are listed far higher. Last week, the MLS Cup final was at it, too, when tickets to see Lionel Messi through Ticketmaster started at $460.50 on the morning of game day.
Yet while supporters in Europe stomp their feet and protest when soccer club owners increase ticket prices, we do not often see the same level of fire and brimstone from American sports fans. Plenty, it should be said, are by now turned off by the ever-increasing demands, or simply resigned to somebody richer taking their place.
It is wrong to say that all Americans can or will absorb the costs of live sports. Frankly, many have more pressing concerns. According to polling by the Century Foundation, around three in 10 voters said they “delayed or skipped medical care in the past year due to cost”, rising to almost half among those aged 18-29. Around half of all those polled said they used their savings to cover everyday expenses and over a third said they had skipped a meal to save money. For many, these mega-sporting events are not even a consideration.
Yet I have also witnessed curious conversations, which do feel unique to the U.S. sports market. Some fans — and by no means all — almost sound triumphant when prices go up for their team, as though it is some kind of perverse status symbol, a victory in itself that their demand is outstripping supply. In the land of the free, some sports fans are, apparently, never more liberated than when the free market is bleeding them dry. One friend’s U.S. sports team recently raised prices following an improvement in their form. His conclusion, far from taking offence, was: “This is the price we pay for greatness!”
Last week, in the middle of an acceptance speech for his FIFA Peace Prize, President Donald Trump appeared to epitomise this sentiment. He told FIFA President Gianni Infantino: “I have to tell you, you have set new records on ticket sales. That is an amazing thing. The numbers are beyond any numbers.”
Trump congratulated Infantino on FIFA ticket sales at the World Cup draw (Mandel NGAN/Pool/Getty Images)
Infantino and FIFA are recent entrants into the U.S. sports market and they have swiftly caught the bug for milking sports fans. Infantino regularly tells Americans that this World Cup of 104 games is equivalent to staging “three Super Bowls a day” for five weeks. We just didn’t realize he meant the ticket prices.
A category one ticket for an opening game involving the host nations USMNT, Canada or Mexico will average $1,825, compared to $618 for the host nation in Qatar in 2022, or $550 when Russia hosted in 2018. The lowest price for any England game in this tournament will be three times higher than the prices England fans paid in Qatar.
FIFA, it appears, have taken one glance at the U.S. sports market and concluded it can be treated as its personal ATM. FIFA, we should remember, take all World Cup revenue from ticketing, broadcast deals, in-stadia sponsorship and even the extortionate parking fees (on sale for between $75 and $175 per spot and per gameday).
All these prices, of course, are a choice for FIFA but their new favorite phrase, in PR speak, is “in accordance with local market conditions”, as though they have no choice but to charge an average of $323 for a game between Qatar and Switzerland, or over $400 for Netherlands against Japan, or $488 for Scotland against Brazil, simply because the events are taking place in the United States.
At some point, a flick may switch in the MAGA world of America First and somebody in the White House may realize that FIFA, who also use their non-profit status to benefit from generous tax breaks, extracts much and inputs a highly debatable amount into the United States. Quick, Mr. President, look over there, a gold peace prize!
In the meantime, U.S. host cities, many of whom committed huge sums of taxpayer dollars to enable FIFA to host this tournament, scramble to uncover the vaunted economic impact of this World Cup via travel, tourism and retail. We are told this will bring $40billion to the U.S. economy, but such studies are, to put it kindly, notoriously tough to demonstrate.
Besides, much of this promise relies on foreign travel and it is difficult, right now, to imagine that global arrivals for this tournament will meet expectations. This seems particularly unlikely amid hostile U.S. immigration policies (the latest bulletin is that the U.S. government may want five years of your social media records and a copy of your DNA in order to grant a tourist visa) while the increasingly dynamic prices of airfares and hotels (dynamic in the sense of up, up, up!) may further dissuade foreign visitors.
This leaves this World Cup relying heavily on domestic soccer fans, or casual U.S. sports fans who want a sample of the biggest sporting competition in the world. Here, there is a broader story of America’s own relationship with soccer, as a sport that attracts 20 million to participate annually, but remains light years behind other sports for broadcast views in this market.
It occurred to me last summer, as I observed swathes of empty seats at Club World Cup games, that FIFA, in their dash for cash, may have been short-sighted and missed an opportunity. By setting prices so high after the Club World Cup draw ($349 for Inter Miami’s game against Al Ahly), they let slip a chance to distinguish themselves from other sports and entertainment products in the country, many of whom milk fans for cash at every turn, whether it be through ticketing, broadcasting or merchandise.
Domestic soccer, we ought to remember, remains a growth sport in the U.S., fighting for relevance and attention against both other sports and better soccer products both in Europe and South America.
Empty seats at last summer’s FIFA Club World Cup (Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images)
Call me a dreamer, but what if FIFA had set out from the start to use their Club World Cup as an inexpensive taster to give new fans access to some of the greatest players in the world? What if they had entered the market at reasonable prices from the outset and sought to charm Americans, rather than seeking immediate returns? Might this have led to bigger attendances, to new fans, who will, over time, become regular consumers of soccer’s global economy? What if they had provided opportunities and concessions for that younger age group, which already leans towards soccer fandom, and provided elite-level sports access to those adults aged under 30, who are seeking a respite from everyday financial burdens?
Instead, when prices eventually dropped, it was a public relations humiliation, reduced in frantic haste to avoid further embarrassing attendances. Yet few of these lessons appear to be learned. In one of his recent appearances alongside Trump in the Oval Office, FIFA President Gianni Infantino said, with a straight face, this will be the “biggest and most inclusive” World Cup of all time.
Inclusive, of course, for those without a Haitian or Iranian passport, but let us not digress. And inclusion, when Infantino says it, is best understood as an antonym, because it tends to be a warning that somebody is about to be excluded. On this occasion, it appears to be anyone who does not consider it sensible to spend, say, $220-$620 per person to watch Norway against Senegal, or $180-$500 to watch Panama play Croatia, both in the group stages of the competition. And this is all for games which may or may not move their location, depending on how Trump may be feeling about a Democrat-run city on any given week.
As for the quarter-finals, the get-in price could be anything from $680 to $1,439, depending on the category (reminder: this is not for hospitality seating), while the semi-finals, played in Atlanta and Dallas, are currently priced at $918-$3,168. Let’s hope my friends over on Instagram have generous credit card limits.
Red flags were raised about FIFA’s opportunism when The Athletic first reported in May that the organization planned to adopt a dynamic pricing model for the World Cup. This, FIFA claimed, was necessary to — you guessed it! — mirror “market conditions ” in the United States, which may also be the justification for FIFA collecting a 15 per cent cut from both buyers and resellers on the official FIFA resale platform.
Clearly, not everyone has been deterred, because almost two million tickets were sold globally before the groups were even drawn, highlighting the interest and passion that endures for the World Cup. Almost five million, however, remain to be sold and it is tempting to wonder whether FIFA may have overreached in this latest round of pricing. In Europe, it has gone down like a bucket of cold vomit, yet that will be of no surprise to FIFA, who likely regard those opinionated fan associations as mere background noise.
In American public life, few appear perturbed. During his campaign to be New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani spoke up against FIFA’s pricing strategy, yet when I emailed the media office of every other mayor in World Cup host cities to see if they would echo his view, not one would go on the record to do so.
Yet I cannot shake the feeling that Americans may take a look at some of the offerings on display, shrug their shoulders and give some of this a miss. While there are markets in the country who regularly charge an arm and a leg, many are more measured. This is particularly true during the regular season, and let’s face it, many group stage games of a 48-team World Cup do not have the jeopardy or quality of play-off periods, to use American parlance, yet FIFA appear to be pricing them in this bracket.
Tickets for the Dallas Cowboys are rarely a bargain but a quick browse on Thursday, for example, revealed that home tickets for the Dallas Mavericks can be claimed for less than $30 in four of their next seven games, while five of the Houston Rockets next seven home games have tickets available for under $50. Even tickets for the NBA Cup semi-final in Las Vegas this weekend were available for less than $90.
FIFA, therefore, are taking a gamble. And it may pay off. But are there 80,000 people prepared to pay between $180 and $500 to watch Japan play against one of Ukraine, Sweden, Poland, Albania (depending who wins the European play-off qualifier) in a group-stage game in Dallas? Can they sell 72,000 tickets between $140 and $450 in Houston for a game between Saudi Arabia and Cape Verde?
Even my buddy may have a tough time arguing that this is simply the price we have to pay for greatness.
