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FIFA is maximizing ticket revenue at the expense of the fan experience. Shocker, the reason is pure greed.

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Today, we are talking all things World Cup including:

• FIFA’s ticketing fiasco
• Freddy The Viral German Fan
• The Science Behind World Cup Grass
• Why There Are So Many French-Born Players At the World Cup

Also this week:

• SpaceX's $2T IPO
• La Sagrada Familia: 100 Years After Antoni Gaudi’s Death
• Anthropic Launches & Throttles Claude Fable

PS. This is a longer newsletter with a lot of memes, images and links. I've included the intro on World Cup ticketing and some memes in the e-mail but read the whole thing here. 

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There’s a kebab place I order from a few times a month.

Awesome transaction.

Massive chicken shawarma plate for $18.

I know it’s good because the website to order pick-up is the jankiest piece of crap in the world and the credit card payments always glitch. Doesn’t matter. We deal with it since the food slaps so hard.

The FIFA World Cup 2026 is a macro version of this dynamic: I’ll muddle through an absolute dogshit user experience in the ticketing portal because I want to chug the World Cup Kool-Aid.

I am clearly not the only person taking the deal.

Over the next month, the FIFA World Cup 2026 will host 104 matches with 6 million available tickets across 16 cities including:

• America (Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York/New Jersey, Philadelphia, San Francisco Bay Area, Seattle)
• Mexico (Guadalajara, Monterrey, Mexico City)
• Canada (Vancouver, Toronto)

Some UX snafus were probably expected as this was FIFA’s first year taking over the ticketing platform. That’s fine. However, it is also a mess because FIFA (shocker) is showing next-level greed and the ticket-buying experience has been incredibly hostile to fans.

Here are some stats to provide context, via The Economist (thank you for the charts):

• FIFA 2026 ticket prices are 2x Qatar 2022 and 4x USA 1994 (adjusted for inflation)
• the cheapest group stage ticket at launch was $200 and the cheapest Finals ticket was $2,030
• the official ticketing platform does dynamic pricing (95 of 104 matches have seen a price increase; average hike of 34%) and FIFA takes a 15% cut on resales (from both the buyer and the seller)
• FIFA plans to make $3 billion from tickets in 2026 vs. $1 billion in Qatar 2022
• $3 billion on tickets is equal to Qatar 2022’s revenue from broadcast rights (these rights are the tournament’s cash cow; $4 billion expected in 2026)
• from 2022 to 2026, the ticket revenue is projected to rise 3x while broadcast revenue is up only 1.3x
• the most expensive team to follow is Brazil: estimated $3,800 to see all 3 group stage games (followed by Portugal, Scotland, USA and Argentina).

Overall, FIFA expects revenue to hit $11B, an increase of +38% from the $8B made in Qatar 2022. In past tournaments, FIFA has made 10-15% of total revenue from tickets. It'll be closer to 27% in 2026...and the reason is pure greed.

I explain more on how FIFA is donging fans in this write-up (which includes all those other World Cup topics mentioned above).

A Few Memes To Wet Your Beak

Written by me, Trung Phan.

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