FIFA's 'Sold Out' World Cup Claims Slammed as Many Seats Remain, Even Trump 'Wouldn't Pay Those Prices'

FIFA insists demand for the 2026 World Cup is overwhelming. Yet days before the United States opens its tournament against Paraguay in Los Angeles, hundreds of seats officially remain unsold and resale platforms are flooded with listings.

For an event marketed as the biggest World Cup ever staged, opening matches are usually sold out. This time, even Donald Trump says the prices are too much.

According to FIFA's own ticketing platform, 132 tickets were still available for the US opener as of this week. Thousands more were listed through resale marketplaces including StubHub, SeatGeek and FIFA's own exchange platform.

Canada's opening fixture against Bosnia Herzegovina in Toronto showed an even softer picture, with 226 tickets still unsold directly through FIFA alongside substantial resale inventory. Only Mexico's opening game against South Africa appears close to a genuine sell-out.

Sticker Shock Around FIFA Pricing

Ticket pricing for the tournament has become one of the dominant talking points before a ball has even been kicked.

The most expensive standard seats for the US match against Paraguay are listed at $2,735 (£2,039.52), while the cheapest are $1,120 (£835.20). Those figures have people questioning because they exceed prices paid for some of the sport's biggest occasions, including the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar.

'I would certainly like to be there, but I wouldn't pay it either, to be honest with you,' Trump told the New York Post in a recent interview.

The governing body has repeatedly framed the expanded 104-match format as a celebration of football's global reach. A continent-sized event with premium pricing layered onto already steep travel and accommodation costs risks shutting out ordinary fans long before kick-off.

Resale Markets Tell Their Own Story

Data from Ticketdata showed the cheapest pair of tickets available for the US and Canada opening matches had fallen to $951 (£709.17) by Monday morning. On FIFA's own resale platform, some seats were available for as low as $690 (£514.54).

That is still expensive by most standards. But the downward movement matters because it undercuts FIFA's public messaging around demand.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino has claimed every match is 'already sold out', but the visible availability online suggested otherwise. While football tournaments always involve some resale churn, the sheer volume of listings for multiple fixtures points to weaker-than-expected uptake at current prices.

Matches involving global heavyweights such as Argentina and Portugal appear largely secure. Games featuring less commercially powerful teams tell another story entirely. The Jordan versus Algeria fixture still showed hundreds of available seats through FIFA's website this week.

A Tournament Built for Scale

The 2026 World Cup is unprecedented in size and geography with forty-eight teams, three host nations and sixteen cities spread across North America.

FIFA has framed the scale as proof of football's growing global dominance. Operationally, though, the model also places enormous financial strain on supporters.

Ben Shields, senior lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, said perceptions of the tournament so far have been heavily shaped by those economics.

That, he argued, 'does not seem to sit well with many.'

Still, FIFA is banking on football itself eventually overpowering the criticism.

'The hope or bet for FIFA is that once the matches start and the greatest players in the world compete for the most prestigious prize of them all, the sport as business lens will fade into the background and the World Cup will be seen and experienced as the enduring global institution that it is,' Shields said.