Sixty-nine Members of Congress wrote to FIFA demanding the governing body reduce ticket prices for the 2026 World Cup1. The letter follows FIFA's introduction of Dynamic pricing for the first time in World Cup history — a system that adjusts costs in real time, replacing the fixed-price tiers used at every previous tournament.
Football Supporters Europe called the pricing "extortionate," calculating that tickets cost up to seven times more than equivalent seats at the 2022 Qatar World Cup2. The cheapest final ticket at MetLife Stadium is $4,185; the most expensive, $8,680. On FIFA's own resale marketplace, one final ticket was listed at $230,000, with FIFA taking a 30% commission on the transaction3.
FIFA's concession: $60 tickets per match, accounting for only 1–2% of total availability4. In an 80,000-seat stadium, that is 800 to 1,600 tickets per game against global demand for a 48-team tournament across 16 cities. As a pricing measure, it is negligible. As a public-relations response to 69 signatories, it confirmed the disparity they set out to document.
The letter has no legal force — FIFA is a Swiss-registered private association beyond US Congressional jurisdiction. But it makes the gap between FIFA's revenue model and the public cost of hosting explicit. US host cities are absorbing $625 million in federal security grants and billions more in infrastructure and policing, while FIFA's Dynamic pricing captures maximum value from every ticket sold and resold through its own platform. The 69 signatories cannot compel a price cut. What they can do is ensure the figures are on the public record — and they have.
