World Cup

FIFA published its first post-tournament operational report on 27 July, detailing nearly 300,000 accredited personnel and 73,700 security staff but no revenue or cost figure, following the same pattern it set after the 2022 Qatar tournament, when audited finances waited for its next Congress .

Host cities filled that gap themselves, with conflicting sums: Arlington banked a record $31m in June hotel tax from AT&T Stadium's 631,843 attendees, and Mexico City's government claimed 44bn pesos of tournament-linked activity against a rival federal estimate of 39.7bn and an industry body's 45-50bn .

Category 1 prices for the final's cheapest seat reached a $10,990 ceiling by 13 April, a 163% rise in three weeks, while organisers reserved the best mid-pitch seats for $3,350 hospitality packages without explaining the reclassification. Football Supporters Europe's Article 102 complaint over the pricing model sat with the European Commission without a registered case number as of 19 April.

The dispute outlived the pricing itself: supporters who bought through the resale market turned up to matches without the tickets they had paid for, prompting legal action on 3 July over undelivered orders . By 15 July the reseller and the tournament's organisers were still blaming each other while a second complainant in Texas lodged a fresh filing .

The group stage produced a record 196 goals across 66 matches, a rate of 2.97 per game unmatched by any 32-team-era group phase, while crowds of 3,605,357 fans beat the attendance record set at the 1994 US-hosted tournament. The expanded field drove much of that: DR Congo reached the knockout stage on 27 June for the first time in 52 years, one of four extra places the 48-team format added for African qualifiers, lifting the continent's total from five nations at Qatar 2022 to nine .

Records kept falling into the closing weekend: England beat France 6-4 in a record-breaking bronze-medal match on 18 July, the same day Kylian Mbappe closed his scoring account on ten goals and Jude Bellingham set England's single-tournament scoring record .