Seed Money
Forget the final. It' won't take ling. Congratulations, Spain, by the way.
Forget France 4 England 6 too. This was an instance where the bonkers game and goals masked the wider story behind it. Because much like the 2026 World Cup as a whole, the action on the pitch, performances of the players, warmth of the hosts (mostly) and the enjoyment of the fans shown on the screens made everything feel okay again. It made us forget some of the bad things that went before it.
But please don’t forget this final scoreline. This is the one that everyone needs to remember.
Fans 0 FIFA 1
In a tournament of small margins, I will remember it for one really bad call on the field (yep, that’s still you, Thomas) and an even worse call made off it. But it will still go down as a brilliant World Cup because of all the great players, games and goals. And it should be thought of fondly. Just don’t let all that good stuff obscure that scoreline above.
On the eve of the final weekend, even I began to wobble. Maybe the fans didn't get quite so shafted after all, I wondered. Maybe I misjudged it. Maybe FIFA weren’t just trying to squeeze every last cent out of them. But count on them to clear up any ambiguity. I then saw that (after checking that it wasn’t the US’s equivalent of April Fools Day) FIFA want to sell the grass from the New Jersey Stadium to the public afterwards.
It would make them – if all the 2,206 chunks of turf are flogged – over $11m. The New Jersey head honcho was not happy; given the public purse paid $13m to get the grass laid in the first place. FIFA organise the party, the host picks up the tab. And FIFA then sell the tableware. So that’s another score worth remembering.
New Jersey 0 FIFA 11
And it sounds like they were lucky to get nil.
But it shouldn’t be possible for FIFA to win if the fans, and the hosts, lose. They should automatically forfeit the match the way they would if they’d fielded an ineligible player.
Yet won they have.
In the BBC’s initial – and unofficial - review of the World Cup, published before the final games were played at the weekend, it stated that FIFA were the biggest winners in this tournament, while fans were one of the biggest losers.
Fans – who football, or soccer, is nothing without, apparently – were the losers. Let that wash over you. Fans. Other than the actual world champions, shouldn’t they always be the biggest winners in any World Cup?
You could make an argument that they didn’t lose that badly, given they had so much fun. It is equally possible to make a case that FIFA didn’t win that big either. They might be billions of dollars richer, but they hardly ‘won’ in any other measurable way. The aforementioned quality on the pitch, and the amazing stadiums that housed it, meant that the tournament succeeded in spite of FIFA. Because the game’s governing body let itself down big time.
They’ll never admit it, but from the scandalous and opaque pricing to the needless politically-driven overturning of the red card, they have certainly not ‘won’ in the court of public opinion. The off-field optics have been awful, and will cast a shadow over the game long after the Levi and Sofi stadium signs have been uncovered.
Fans, meanwhile, will move on. They always do.
But will the impact be felt later on? Certainly it might when they get their next credit card statement, but if this was the World Cup that allowed football to spread further around the world, then why did we make it so damned hard for them?
I met Argentina fans in Qatar who’d sold their cars to go to the Middle East to watch just one game. I know the United States wasn’t as geographically challenging but with the cost of a train journeys or parking, plus the exorbitant ticket prices (which even 'Greatest Event Ever" Trump baulked at) all adding up who knows what fans might have had to sell to get to this one?
And that’s the ones that did get in. Some fans – thanks to expensive or lengthy visa processes – couldn’t get there are all. Some were in the country but locked out of stadiums, either priced out or because they purchased tickets that didn’t actually exist.
We saw lots of fans outside and inside having a great time, but there was a suspicion that we were only seeing the high earners. This wasn’t a place for the ordinary Joe. Or if it was, it came at a high price. Cannibalising the old joke about club owners; the quickest way to become quite wealthy at this World Cup was to be very wealthy, then go to a game.
Host Cities 0 FIFA 1
Other losers - according to the BBC - and aside from some teams and a referee who were made less welcome, include hotels and the wider host cities themselves, who are unlikely to benefit from any tourism or economic boost.. As most stadiums were already built, there wasn’t even a surge in jobs ahead of the tournament, other than part-time and zero-hours contracts to cover the increase in people on game days. The vast majority of staff (game makers, or whatever the term was this time) are volunteers anyway. All that dosh isn’t being wasted on anything as stupid as paying people.
But why did anyone have to lose?
Wasn’t there any way we could all win? This could – should - have been a massive celebration of the world’s most popular sport with fans from all over the world converging on North and Central America for a huge jamboree of cultures.
It should have opened the game up more, not restricted it to a privileged percentage? It could have been about inclusivity and diversity and bringing people together, rather than further separating the haves from the have nots? That would have created plenty more winners. And additional fans from overseas would have no doubt piled in and filled the hotels; not left their owners fuming when FIFA cancelled all their block-booked reservations before it kicked off.
FIFA 30% Fans 0
As Spain and Argentina prepared to meet, some tickets for the final were priced anywhere from $13,000 to $30,000 (plus the 15% resale fee FIFA take from buyers and sellers). A few more were rather optimistically listed on resale sites for up to $2m.
Of course, it is the World Cup Final. You expect prices to be much higher (face value was already $4-7K). But $13 -30K? It’s hard to imagine many ‘ordinary’ Spanish and Argentinian fans who could afford to pay that to go to one game, no matter its importance.
Someone on a fans’ forum said the prices were commensurate with those for other events in North America, but I don’t know of that many people who can afford to pay out thirteen or thirty grand to go to a concert. But the bigger question is whether should fans ever have to pay that much?
Some of the same forums led me to believe that the fans in the stadiums consisted mainly of these four types:
Locals with plenty of disposable income (approx. 50%)
The ‘once in a lifetime’ punter who couldn’t let the opportunity pass them by (10%)
Parents with incredibly cute youngsters able to cry on cue (23%)
Scots (17%). But then they did have 28 years to save up!
That last one’s a joke by the way. Sort of.
It was predictable and even logical that this was going to be a very commercially focussed World Cup. But did FIFA make the mistake of seeing fans only as consumers; there for the purpose of being monetised and profited from?
If they do make the estimated $13bn, and they made $7bn from the cycle that ended in Qatar, then that’s a lot of money that’s being generated in a fairly short period. Yes, it has to be distributed to federations but we’re still talking about twenty billion dollars.
That’s twenty-thousand millions.
Could they have forsaken a little of that revenue by fixing and capping prices that meant that they were not out of reach of the average fan? Like they did in Qatar – and almost every previous World Cup – or at the Olympics?
And would giving ticket holders free access to public transport (again as they have at previous global events) have really set FIFA back that much?
If football really is nothing without fans, then why not put them first? Was it really necessary to hide behind market forces, dynamic pricing and all the other guff that was used to justify what was essentially a huge price hike that either priced fans out, or completely emptied their piggy banks?
As the touted grass sale proves, these last few weeks have been a massive – and fairly grubby – money grab that has viewed fans as little more than walking wallets. I personally think the fans deserved more than that.
Fans 1 FIFA 1?
Is it fixable? Or is the money-money-money culture so ingrained in FIFA now that there is no turning back? Even if arch-plunderer Infantino is no longer untouchable when the rest of the world takes a step back and reflects on what just happened.
I suppose you can only fix something if you think it’s broken to begin with.
In four years’ time, the same fans will be expected to travel across three continents and six host countries. A team might – even if they make a group stage exit – still have to play games in Montevideo, Madrid and Marrakesh. I hope that sanity prevails before then. There is a chance to reset; to rethink the whole relationship with fans.
Prices could be fixed again, at reasonable figures that don’t shut anyone out. Travelling could be minimised – with two cities in close proximities hosting all the games in a group (as they did for countless other World Cups) – and the other parts of the experience enhanced (such as reintroducing free public transport or giving out complimentary water or sunscreen to fans outside stadiums) to show that the game does know who it’s there for.
It's a massive opportunity for FIFA to show the world that it can do better.
It doesn’t have to be FIFA 2 Fans 0. Why not let fans score a deserved equaliser in 2030, and go into extra time in Saudi Arabia after that?
But don’t bet on it happening. It’s far more likely that fans will be licking their wounds, and wondering what hit them, yet again in four years' time.
And if they can’t do that for the hundredth anniversary, then I’m guessing they never will.
