The 2026 FIFA World Cup shattered tournament attendance records, underscoring the extraordinary commercial pull of soccer across North America. With 89% of matches achieving at least 99% capacity and 69% selling out, FIFA’s ticketing strategy has delivered significant revenue gains, while potentially setting a new benchmark for pricing major sporting events, reveals GlobalData, a leading data and analytics company.

Records were expected to be broken in 2026 following the expansion of the tournament from 64 to 104 matches. However, GlobalData’s report “The Business of 2026 FIFA World Cup” reveals that the record was achieved after 56 games—earlier than in previous World Cups.

Despite fan protests and widespread criticism of ticket prices for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, fans were willing to pay the high prices to attend matches across North America. FIFA defended its pricing strategy and use of dynamic pricing by pointing to the commercial landscape in North America, where tickets for high-profile sporting events are typically more expensive than elsewhere in the world.

Jake Kemp, Sport Senior Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Ultimately, high ticket prices, combined with the expansion of the tournament, resulted in FIFA generating more from ticket and hospitality sales than from any other revenue source in 2026. Reports suggest this revenue will surpass $5 billion for the tournament. The additional matches meant the World Cup could sell an extra 2.15 million tickets compared with previous World Cups. This represents a major financial success for FIFA, although the ethical question of extracting additional money from passionate fans is likely to remain.”

Ticket and hospitality sales are the primary driver of FIFA’s forecast revenue for the 2026 tournament. As a result, the non-profit organization’s budgeted tournament revenue has increased substantially, rising from pre-tournament forecasts of $11 billion to $15 billion.

High ticket prices were just one of several areas in which FIFA appears to have sought to maximize revenue at the 2026 tournament. Given the substantial commercial value of the North American—particularly the US—market, hosting the tournament there represented an opportunity FIFA did not want to forgo.

Kemp concludes: “With fans ultimately willing to accept and pay these prices, this approach may offer a blueprint for future major events in North America. The most notable will be the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. The apparent success of this ticketing strategy provides an indication of how the IOC could approach pricing in 2028, as the only global mega-event comparable in scale and stature to the FIFA World Cup.”