# The Most Profitable World Cup in History

An episode of [Big Take](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1578096201), 11 Jun 2026, 16 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/UVBrz8bN8aM2Xe47PEPu/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/825d4e29-b616-46f4-afd7-ae2b0013005c/07a19f67-46ac-404d-af88-b46601541802/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=8b1dd624-a026-43e9-8b57-ae2b00130066

The 2026 World Cup kicks off today in Mexico City. It’ll be the largest in FIFA’s history, spanning three host countries and 48 competing teams and is expected to generate between $11 and $13 billion. But the tournament’s expansion comes at the expense of fans navigating a new dynamic pricing model and cities shouldering overhead costs. On today’s Big Take, host David Gura, Bloomberg’s Vanessa Perdomo and economist Andrew Zimbalist track who stands to profit the most from the people’s game. Read more: The Hidden Cost of the Most Expensive World Cup Ever Listen more: The "Americanization" of the World Cup - The Deal with Alex Rodriguez and Jason Kelly We have a special Bloomberg subscription offer for podcast listeners at Bloomberg.com/podcastoffer. Hosted by David Gura; Produced by David Fox with help from Rachael Lewis-Krisky and Victor Swezey; Reported by Vanessa Perdomo; Edited by Aaron Edwards. Fact-checking by Laura Newcombe and Rachael Lewis-Krisky; Engineering by Emma Munger. Senior Producer: Naomi Shavin; Deputy Executive Producer: Julia Weaver. Executive Producer: Nicole Beemsterboer. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
[0:10] Speaker 2: The twenty twenty six FIFA World Cup kicks off today
[0:13] Speaker 2: in Mexico City.
[0:14] Speaker 3: Oh my god, the biggest Wow Cup ever.
[0:20] Speaker 4: I never thought that I would actually be going to
[0:22] Speaker 4: feed a World Cup.
[0:23] Speaker 5: The World Cup is in my bankyard. In one way
[0:26] Speaker 5: or another, I.
[0:27] Speaker 3: Am going to be a part of it.
[0:28] Speaker 2: The tournament is expected to be historic.
[0:31] Speaker 4: It's by far the largest on a million different scales.
[0:34] Speaker 4: Right on this fact that there's forty eight teams instead
[0:37] Speaker 4: of thirty two, one hundred and four matches instead of
[0:40] Speaker 4: sixty or so, so on that scale, it is going
[0:44] Speaker 4: to be the biggest sporting event the world has ever
[0:46] Speaker 4: seen outside of the Olympics.
[0:50] Speaker 2: Vanessa Prodomo covers the Business of Sports for Bloomberg. She
[0:53] Speaker 2: says this year's Cup also marks the first time FIFA's
[0:56] Speaker 2: matches will be spread across three host countries, Go, Canada,
[1:00] Speaker 2: and the United States.
[1:02] Speaker 4: I think they like being able to say we have
[1:03] Speaker 4: the biggest tournament in the world, This is the biggest
[1:05] Speaker 4: sporting event ever. I think the way they will try
[1:10] Speaker 4: and frame it is that we're getting.
[1:12] Speaker 5: More people involved.
[1:13] Speaker 4: But I think the main thing we're going to see
[1:15] Speaker 4: is more games is more revenue. FIFA takes all the
[1:18] Speaker 4: revenue from every single game that happens, so it's hard
[1:23] Speaker 4: to say that's not the end goal there, but that.
[1:26] Speaker 2: Increase in revenue could come along with headaches for fans.
[1:30] Speaker 4: There is growing backlash tonight over the cost of ticket
[1:34] Speaker 4: prices for the World Cup.
[1:35] Speaker 5: Why are the World Cup twenty twenty six tickets so expensive?
[1:39] Speaker 5: Flight's expensive, yeah, hotel's expensive, food expensive?
[1:44] Speaker 2: And then FIFA said, wait, let's make the tickets crazy tea.
[1:49] Speaker 1: Some of the ticket prices for the final match at
[1:52] Speaker 1: MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, just outside of New York City,
[1:55] Speaker 1: some of them are going now for fifteen or twenty
[1:58] Speaker 1: thousand dollars per ticket.
[2:00] Speaker 2: That's economist Andrew zimbleist. And the country's hosting the matches
[2:04] Speaker 2: also face some big hurdles. Who stands to profit the most?
[2:08] Speaker 2: And with ticket prices for marquee games in the tens
[2:12] Speaker 2: of thousands of dollars, who is the people's game? Four?
[2:15] Speaker 1: Well, there's this mythology out there that FIFA uses and
[2:19] Speaker 1: that the IOC uses for Olympics, and the mythology is
[2:23] Speaker 1: that since the entire world is fascinated by the Games
[2:27] Speaker 1: and people around the entire world will be watching the
[2:30] Speaker 1: games streaming or on television. That there's a tremendous amount
[2:35] Speaker 1: of exposure that your city gets from hosting the games.
[2:38] Speaker 1: If there are a couple of billion people around the
[2:41] Speaker 1: world who are tuned in to the game, then those
[2:44] Speaker 1: couple of billion people will learn something about your city.
[2:47] Speaker 1: Well they might or they might not.
[2:52] Speaker 2: I'm David Garrett and this is the big take from
[2:54] Speaker 2: Bloomberg News today on the show, FIFA's big bet to
[2:57] Speaker 2: turbo charge the twenty twenty six World Cup to make
[3:00] Speaker 2: it the most profitable World Cup in history. Who's getting
[3:04] Speaker 2: rich and who's footing the bill? So the World Cup
[3:10] Speaker 2: is here. I'm curious if you're going to go, and
[3:12] Speaker 2: if there are any matches that are like top of
[3:14] Speaker 2: mind for you that you're most excited about.
[3:16] Speaker 5: Well, I am going to go.
[3:17] Speaker 4: I'm going to the first match in Philadelphia this weekend,
[3:20] Speaker 4: which I'm really excited about. But also the first match
[3:23] Speaker 4: at MetLife against Brazil Morocco, I think is going.
[3:26] Speaker 5: To be one of the best big games of the
[3:28] Speaker 5: group stage. It's going to be amazing.
[3:30] Speaker 2: This year's World Cup is FIFA's biggest ever with fifty
[3:33] Speaker 2: percent more teams and more than sixty percent more matches.
[3:36] Speaker 2: I asked Bloomberg's Vanessa Perdomo for her read on why
[3:39] Speaker 2: FIFA decided to expand this year's tournament. Why did they
[3:43] Speaker 2: make those changes. Is it's just purely opportunistic, like they
[3:45] Speaker 2: could add more games, more participants, or was there a
[3:48] Speaker 2: need to kind of do that this time around?
[3:50] Speaker 5: There definitely wasn't a need for it.
[3:52] Speaker 4: You know, I don't think anyone in the soccer landscape
[3:55] Speaker 4: had asked for The players certainly hadn't asked for it.
[3:57] Speaker 4: The federations didn't ask for it either. You know, we
[4:00] Speaker 4: already have players who are their seasons are really long. Anyway,
[4:04] Speaker 4: International soccer is a huge timeframe, so it wasn't needed.
[4:08] Speaker 4: A lot of people liked the way the last few
[4:10] Speaker 4: tournaments work, but this isn't the first time we've seen
[4:12] Speaker 4: an expansion. We see expansions throughout time, and I think
[4:16] Speaker 4: that it was just an opportunistic thing where they thought,
[4:19] Speaker 4: let's add more people in.
[4:21] Speaker 5: And there's both sides to it.
[4:23] Speaker 4: Now you're letting a new nations teams who have never
[4:25] Speaker 4: been here before, which is really exciting, and I think
[4:28] Speaker 4: that's part of what the World Cup is about. But
[4:31] Speaker 4: it was really opportunistic from FIFA to decide we want
[4:35] Speaker 4: to expand the tournament. This is what we're seeing with
[4:37] Speaker 4: the Club World Cup added last year. It's just adding
[4:40] Speaker 4: more tournaments to add more revenue for FIFA.
[4:44] Speaker 2: FIFA saying this is going to be the most profitable
[4:46] Speaker 2: World Cup yet, how much money is this tournament expected
[4:49] Speaker 2: to generate?
[4:50] Speaker 4: Well, that's a very interesting question, and you know this
[4:54] Speaker 4: World Cup is expected to generate anywhere between eleven and
[4:57] Speaker 4: thirteen billion dollars, and it's hard to say why a
[5:01] Speaker 4: nonprofit needs to.
[5:02] Speaker 5: Generate that much.
[5:03] Speaker 4: Piche chepa is which FIFA is a nonprofit. The last
[5:06] Speaker 4: World Cup generated about five to six billion dollars. So
[5:10] Speaker 4: I think that what they will say is this goes
[5:13] Speaker 4: into soccer federations around the world and it's about growing
[5:16] Speaker 4: the game around the world, and particularly when you come
[5:18] Speaker 4: into the US market, which they need to do a
[5:21] Speaker 4: lot of growing the sport in the US to try
[5:24] Speaker 4: and bring it up to the rest of the world.
[5:26] Speaker 2: As a nonprofit, FIFA's state admission is to promote the
[5:30] Speaker 2: development of soccer around the world. The organization makes money
[5:33] Speaker 2: in all kinds of ways, from marketing and licensing rights
[5:37] Speaker 2: to valuable broadcast deals with companies like Fox and Telemundo.
[5:41] Speaker 2: But another big way FIFA makes money is from ticket sales,
[5:44] Speaker 2: and this year FIFA introduced what they call variable pricing,
[5:48] Speaker 2: a system that sent ticket prices through the roof. For
[5:53] Speaker 2: the uninitiated, how does dynamic ticket pricing work.
[5:55] Speaker 4: Dynamic ticket pricing basically is a fluctuation system. Right it's
[5:59] Speaker 4: they had five hundred million people say they wanted tickets
[6:02] Speaker 4: for Stage one of the World Cup Entry Round Entry
[6:05] Speaker 4: round of tickets, and those tickets were said to be
[6:08] Speaker 4: starting at sixty five sixty nine dollars. And by the
[6:12] Speaker 4: time you have five hundred million people saying they want
[6:15] Speaker 4: those tickets, the prices skyrocket because of supply and demand.
[6:19] Speaker 2: That system has pushed the price of the cheapest tickets
[6:22] Speaker 2: for some of the most popular matches into the four
[6:24] Speaker 2: figures range, and the best seats are running at ten
[6:27] Speaker 2: thousand dollars or more. By contrast, a ticket to this
[6:31] Speaker 2: year's Champions League final in Budapest was capped at nine
[6:34] Speaker 2: hundred and fifty euros were roughly eleven hundred dollars. What
[6:38] Speaker 2: has the reaction been like from fans to using this model.
[6:41] Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like I got the first emails
[6:43] Speaker 2: about tickets. Now it's a long time ago, many many
[6:45] Speaker 2: months ago, but has there been kind of a slow boil?
[6:48] Speaker 2: Was their immediate outrage how a fans reacted to using
[6:50] Speaker 2: this system?
[6:51] Speaker 4: Oh, there was absolutely immediate outrage, especially media outrage from
[6:55] Speaker 4: European fans who do not understand this ticket pricing. They
[6:59] Speaker 4: do not understand dynamic ticket pricing is they have a
[7:01] Speaker 4: very capped system in Europe. So there was a lot
[7:05] Speaker 4: of people saying that they were planning on traveling over
[7:07] Speaker 4: but they can't afford it anymore because of, you know,
[7:10] Speaker 4: the ticket pricing.
[7:11] Speaker 5: Why would they go?
[7:12] Speaker 4: So there was immediate outrage on that front. And then obviously,
[7:16] Speaker 4: you know, US fans aren't happy either. You know, you
[7:19] Speaker 4: thought you'd be able to take your family potentially to
[7:21] Speaker 4: some of these games. The whole idea is that it's
[7:23] Speaker 4: supposed to grow soccer in the US. But if you
[7:26] Speaker 4: can't take your family or whoever to games, you're kind
[7:31] Speaker 4: of cutting people off there.
[7:33] Speaker 5: But at the same time, when.
[7:35] Speaker 4: We look at tickets for the Super Bowl and we
[7:37] Speaker 4: look at tickets for the NBA Finals, for a Taylor
[7:39] Speaker 4: Swift concert.
[7:40] Speaker 5: This is what we're used to in the US.
[7:44] Speaker 2: Have policymakers and politicians kind of put their finger on
[7:48] Speaker 2: this outrage? Have we seen them react to this in
[7:50] Speaker 2: any way?
[7:51] Speaker 5: Oh, they definitely have.
[7:52] Speaker 4: We've seen a lot of congress people come up and
[7:54] Speaker 4: step up and say we need to do something about
[7:56] Speaker 4: the ticket pricing. There has been an investigation now into
[7:59] Speaker 4: ticket pricing, and we saw a report recently actually that
[8:03] Speaker 4: someone had pointed out that there were huge groups of
[8:06] Speaker 4: tickets available on secondary ticket pricing, which could be FIFA
[8:10] Speaker 4: trying to sell them in.
[8:11] Speaker 5: A different way.
[8:12] Speaker 2: In a way, really there is.
[8:14] Speaker 4: An investigation into it because you know, they don't want
[8:19] Speaker 4: empty stadiums.
[8:20] Speaker 5: There is a risk that.
[8:21] Speaker 4: You are going to see stadiums and see the broadcast
[8:25] Speaker 4: that they might not be empty, but they're not going
[8:27] Speaker 4: to be as full as they would have initially thought.
[8:31] Speaker 2: Skyrocketing ticket prices could mean additional revenue for FIFA, but
[8:35] Speaker 2: what could it mean for host countries preparing for an
[8:37] Speaker 2: influx of soccer fans that's.
[8:39] Speaker 3: Next for FIFA.
[8:50] Speaker 2: Expanding the World Cup and introducing dynamic ticket pricing might
[8:54] Speaker 2: seem like a pretty good deal, but for cities it's
[8:57] Speaker 2: less cut and dry.
[8:58] Speaker 1: If you're a host city for the World Cup, you
[9:01] Speaker 1: sign a contract as a host city with FIFA, and
[9:05] Speaker 1: that host contract requires the city to take care of
[9:09] Speaker 1: all of these needs.
[9:10] Speaker 2: Andrew Zimbaleist is an economist and a professor at Smith
[9:13] Speaker 2: College who studies the business of sports.
[9:16] Speaker 1: Security is one of them, Transportation is another one. Sanitation
[9:21] Speaker 1: is another one. Producing fan fests in the city is
[9:26] Speaker 1: another major expense. So the host city agreement with FIFA
[9:30] Speaker 1: says it's the city's responsibility to take care of all
[9:33] Speaker 1: of this. FIFA is going to earn over this quadranium,
[9:36] Speaker 1: this four year cycle that the current World Cup will
[9:38] Speaker 1: take place in, FIFA is going to earn something like
[9:41] Speaker 1: thirteen billion dollars. They're not sharing any of that loot
[9:45] Speaker 1: with the costs of actual hosting.
[9:50] Speaker 2: In the US, the federal government has stepped in to
[9:52] Speaker 2: help shoulder some of these costs. The Trump administration has
[9:55] Speaker 2: made six hundred and twenty five million dollars available to
[9:58] Speaker 2: US city's hosting World Cup games. It's an investment that
[10:02] Speaker 2: comes after more than a year of FIFA courting the
[10:05] Speaker 2: President directly. The organization has leased an office in Trump
[10:09] Speaker 2: Tower and FIFA's president bestowed on Trump the first ever
[10:13] Speaker 2: FIFA Peace Prize.
[10:15] Speaker 1: There are eleven host cities in the United States, so
[10:18] Speaker 1: we're talking roughly about sixty million per city. That's a
[10:22] Speaker 1: good chunk of money, but it's not nearly enough. On
[10:25] Speaker 1: the cost side, the estimates are running between one hundred
[10:28] Speaker 1: million and two hundred million dollars per host city. I
[10:32] Speaker 1: think some of those figures might be too conservative, but nonetheless,
[10:36] Speaker 1: if you have on one side of the ledger a
[10:38] Speaker 1: cost of one hundred million to two hundred million dollars,
[10:41] Speaker 1: on the other side of the ledger, you essentially have zero.
[10:44] Speaker 1: Then that's the financial fallout. Some cities, like Chicago were
[10:48] Speaker 1: offered the opportunity to host games and turned it down
[10:51] Speaker 1: because they realized they would be losing money on it.
[10:54] Speaker 2: With the exception of Russia in twenty eighteen, every World
[10:57] Speaker 2: Cup since nineteen sixty four has lost money.
[11:01] Speaker 1: Economists who have done independent scholarship on this question have
[11:06] Speaker 1: virtually with universal agreement, found that hosting the World Cup
[11:12] Speaker 1: games is not a boon to the local economy either
[11:15] Speaker 1: in the short run in the long run.
[11:16] Speaker 2: So Asplomberg's Vanessa Proudomo, why a country would do this.
[11:21] Speaker 4: I think for this tournament and for other things like
[11:23] Speaker 4: the La Olympics that are coming up, you want to
[11:26] Speaker 4: be seen as you know, the eyes of the world
[11:29] Speaker 4: are on you, which is really enticing. But I think
[11:32] Speaker 4: it's the idea of, especially under President Trump, using sports
[11:38] Speaker 4: as a beacon of light and a unifying hope, because
[11:43] Speaker 4: it really is that, and I think it's just a
[11:47] Speaker 4: way to be perceived better by the public.
[11:49] Speaker 2: Sports diplomacy.
[11:50] Speaker 5: Sports diplomacy exactly.
[11:52] Speaker 3: We've talked a.
[11:53] Speaker 2: Lot about the US, how about Canada and Mexico, how
[11:56] Speaker 2: are they how have they been preparing for this World
[11:58] Speaker 2: Cup and thinking about how to be avoid massive cost
[12:01] Speaker 2: overruns in those two countries.
[12:03] Speaker 4: Mexico has been putting a lot of you know, strain
[12:07] Speaker 4: and thought into security for this tournament, very big for them.
[12:11] Speaker 4: But also I've heard in Mexico they're also not happy
[12:14] Speaker 4: with the way that things are being run and the
[12:17] Speaker 4: way that ticket prices are being handled in Mexico as well,
[12:19] Speaker 4: which is interesting because they actually have a completely different
[12:22] Speaker 4: system totally here, totally different than in the US. So
[12:26] Speaker 4: I think fans across you know, Mexico and Canada are
[12:29] Speaker 4: also feeling the same sort of problems that we are,
[12:32] Speaker 4: but they have a very different system because they have
[12:35] Speaker 4: a lot less games. But I have talked to people
[12:37] Speaker 4: in those areas and they feel like this World Cup
[12:40] Speaker 4: is thought of as the US's World Cup and we're
[12:43] Speaker 4: just kind of here being talked about a little bit
[12:47] Speaker 4: but not a lot.
[12:49] Speaker 2: A backdrop to all of this is the Trump administration's
[12:52] Speaker 2: crack down on immigration, and I'm curious sort of how
[12:55] Speaker 2: that has affected who's been able to get here to
[12:59] Speaker 2: play and watch games, who might be affected going forward.
[13:01] Speaker 2: What do we know about that?
[13:03] Speaker 4: Well, we know that Iran has set up camp in
[13:05] Speaker 4: Mexico instead of coming to play in the US.
[13:08] Speaker 5: They have their games in the US, but because of.
[13:11] Speaker 4: The visa situation and because of the World Cup, they
[13:14] Speaker 4: decided to set up camp in Mexico and they're going
[13:16] Speaker 4: to actually have to enter in and leave on the
[13:18] Speaker 4: same day of the game, you know, which is not
[13:22] Speaker 4: something that's very common at all. Fans of certain countries
[13:26] Speaker 4: like Iran and other countries are not allowed. They're simply
[13:29] Speaker 4: not allowed, and they didn't really change.
[13:32] Speaker 5: That for fans. They have been more lenient about certain things.
[13:35] Speaker 4: There is bombs that were put on countries for visas
[13:39] Speaker 4: because one of the things they were worried about was
[13:41] Speaker 4: people overseeing they're welcome. That's very that's been very apparent
[13:45] Speaker 4: from the Trump administration. But they did take away that
[13:49] Speaker 4: some of the bombs for specific countries is fifteen thousand
[13:51] Speaker 4: dollars that people had to put up in order to come.
[13:54] Speaker 4: But if you proved that you had a World Cup ticket,
[13:57] Speaker 4: you are now allowed to bypass that VA bond. But
[14:01] Speaker 4: a lot of people who have been to every single
[14:04] Speaker 4: World Cup in their lifetime are not coming because they
[14:08] Speaker 4: couldn't get visas on time, or simply because they don't
[14:11] Speaker 4: like the way this World Cup is being handled. And
[14:13] Speaker 4: I've heard that actually a lot some people aren't coming
[14:16] Speaker 4: simply because they don't like the way this World Cup
[14:19] Speaker 4: is being handled by the US, by FIFA.
[14:22] Speaker 2: What is this World Cup? Of the way it's set up,
[14:24] Speaker 2: The way tickets are allocated in priced tell you about
[14:28] Speaker 2: the way this tournament's going to look going forward when
[14:30] Speaker 2: you look at future World Cups? How much is that
[14:32] Speaker 2: going to be modeled over what we have here.
[14:34] Speaker 4: I think they will keep the size of the tournament
[14:36] Speaker 4: the same, at least for now. I think, you know,
[14:38] Speaker 4: we'll see forty eight teams again in twenty thirty. Definitely
[14:42] Speaker 4: in you know, twenty twenty seven with the Women's World
[14:44] Speaker 4: Cup is going to be the first time they have
[14:45] Speaker 4: the expanded field there. We will potentially hopefully fingers crossed
[14:50] Speaker 4: from me because I'm a big you know, soccer fan,
[14:52] Speaker 4: But in twenty thirty one hosts the Women's World Cup.
[14:55] Speaker 4: I think we'll see a very similar model there. But
[14:59] Speaker 4: the problem as in other places, like in twenty thirty,
[15:03] Speaker 4: when you have the World Cup returning to Europe, they
[15:07] Speaker 4: have different systems there and they are capped, you know,
[15:11] Speaker 4: you're not allowed to run the tournament the same way
[15:14] Speaker 4: with ticket prices there, so it'll probably end up being
[15:17] Speaker 4: a lot more affordable. Then we'll see it go back
[15:19] Speaker 4: to a similar system there. But I think they're not
[15:23] Speaker 4: going to let up on the revenue they're generating from
[15:27] Speaker 4: this World Cup. There's no way FEVA is going to
[15:29] Speaker 4: go back to five billion dollars in revenue after generating
[15:32] Speaker 4: over eleven billion dollars.
[15:40] Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gurra.
[15:43] Speaker 2: To get more from the Big Take and unlimited access
[15:45] Speaker 2: to all of Bloomberg Dot com. Subscribe today at Bloomberg
[15:49] Speaker 2: dot com. Slash Podcast offer Thanks for listening. We'll be
[15:53] Speaker 2: back tomorrow.

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