The supply of these experiences is limited by the length of the season – in the NFL you have just nine home games, roughly half the number of major European football leagues and so in the NFL every game counts even more.
Dynamic pricing, especially of hospitality tickets, has provided the method for teams to squeeze the revenue hard, especially as under NFL rules, the massive TV revenues have been split more equally than in football. With all 11 US World Cup venues being NFL stadiums, American football is leaving its mark on its rather different namesake.
This is all very different to previous tournaments. An essential part of the logic of hosting had been to help catalyse new infrastructure including transport and stadium builds and rebuilds.
2026 sold itself as an asset-light tournament that would avoid costly white elephants such as Miyagi in Japan, Cape Town’s Green Point in South Africa, and the $300m Manaus stadium in the middle of the Amazon. The costs had often been met by host-country taxpayers’ capital budgets. In turn, those countries had calculated the investments were worthwhile exercises as nation branding in a more global world. But all three stadia struggled to attract enough post-tournament regular use.
2026 has mainly reversed that logic, with a small exception for Mexico. FIFA has rented the stadia, mostly paid for by American Football fans, and then aggressively maximised revenues with US-style pricing. Whereas previous tournaments had large building costs paid for by taxpayers and borrowing, 2026 costs are instead being paid for by the attendees. And the revenues raised will soar, from the increased number of games, size of stadiums and of course these incredible ticket prices.
How much revenue will be raised from tickets and hospitality is unclear. It was initially forecast to more than treble, rising from $929m at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar to more than $3bn. Richard Sheehan, economics professor and sports finance expert at the University of Notre Dame, believes the total ticket and hospitality revenue for this years tournament could top $7bn, a seven fold increase. He assumes ticket revenue per match will not just double from the $15m at the last World Cup, but increase nearly five fold to $71m.
