The piece below claims that international sports events like the World Cup always fall short, and that the impending disaster of a World Cup taking place across three countries, the US, Mexico and Canada, is almost certain to happen because of Donald Dumb's vulgar and demeanning posture vis-a-vis Canada and Mexico.
The real reasons why FIFA is sounding the alarm is because people around the world do not like the arrogance, xenophobia and racism of Trump's US.
Gasoline is expensive and so are flight tickets and game tickets.
People are angry at the sublime Trump asskisser, FIFA president Gianni Infantino, who awarded the senile Moron a 'Peass' Prize.
People worldwide are angry at the Iran war launched by the Imbecile-in-Chief on behalf of a war criminal like ultra-orthodox Zionist Benjamin Netanyahu who is personally responsible for the GAZA genocide.
Potential visitors from what Trump called "shithole" countries are banned from obtaining visas and even if granted visas, they will not attend for fear of being abused, mistreated, bullied, maltreated, brutalized and potentially killed by Trump's two militias, ICE-GESTAPO and U.S. CBP.
Even visitors from "non-Shithole" (supposedly friendly) countries are wary of an aggressive US customs that might land them in
jail for no reason whatsoever under the racist white supremacist policies by
Stephen Miller, the sinister Zionist "advisor" of the Great Moron.
Regular Canadian and Mexican travel to the US over the summer season has dropped by nearly 60% this year compared to pre-Trump years.
Penny-pinching avaricious Trump is less likely to support hosting states' federal contributions to their budgets for the FIFA events, so economic disaster is looming.
There are questions about many teams' refusal to play on US soil, so FIFA had to re-engineer its schedules to have teams play uniquely on Canadian or Mexican soil.
The aggressive and heavily armed racist white supremacist organizations that Trump has enabled are perceived as dangerous and inimical to foreign travelers and visitors, so people will probably skip this World Cup because it is not worth the headaches of having to deal with these violent neo-Nazi groups.
So, it is not only economic drivers that are already failing this World Cup; it is the nasty and unfriendly America of Trump. Obviously Trump would love the financial windfall - he worships money - but without the "damn foreigners". But this dumbass idiot doesn't understand what makes America REALLY GREAT.
These large events orchestrated by big companies have one objective and only one: How to fleece stupid fans (who find kicking a ball an exercise of nationalistic fervor) of their money. People sort of accepted this begnin agreement of sorts. But Trump's adding insult to injury by humiliating people at consulates and airports because of their origin and skin color is the final nail in the coffin of any feeling of sympathy for the US under Trump.
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U.S. hotels are calling the World Cup a ‘non-event’ and 80% warn bookings are falling short of expectations, report finds
Sasha Rogelberg
Updated Tue, May 12, 2026
Last year, FIFA president Gianni Infantino hailed the upcoming World Cup as the equivalent of “104 Super Bowls,” quantifying just how big the sport known as football worldwide is—or, at least in comparison to America’s football version. With the average Super Bowl getting 125.6 million views annually, Infantino expects the World Cup to attract the equivalent viewership of three Super Bowls a day for all 39 days of the competition. FIFA predicts games would touch six billion viewers globally, and expects the influx of travelers and tourism will help contribute to a projected $30.5 billion economic windfall for the three host countries of the U.S, Mexico and Canada.
The U.S. hospitality industry, however, is skeptical of the event’s money-making promises.
Of more than 200 hotels surveyed across the 11 U.S. host cities, nearly 80% said hotel bookings are tracking below initial forecasts, a new report from the American Hotel and Lodging Association (AHLA) found. Though FIFA data shows more than five million tickets have already been booked for the event, “indicators suggest the anticipated economic lift may fall short of expectations,” the report said.
Most respondents noted trouble with overseas visitors obtaining visas, in addition to other geopolitical challenges, as the primary factors slowing down travel demand. Other U.S. hotels said FIFA created “an artificial early demand signal” with an overcommitment to hotel blocks. In March, FIFA exercised an opt-out clause in its contract and cancelled thousands of hotel rooms in all 16 of the World Cup host cities, including Philadelphia and Dallas, to accommodate shifting demand.
According to a FIFA spokesperson, the organization’s accommodations team worked closely with hotels to adjust room blocks, including on rates and room types.
“All room releases were conducted in line with contractually agreed timelines with hotel partners—a standard practice for an event of this scale,” the spokesperson said in a statement to Fortune. “In many cases, room releases were made ahead of established deadlines to further accommodate requests from hotels.”
The hotels surveyed—in the cities of Kansas City, New York, Los Angeles, Boston, Seattle, San Francisco, Houston, Dallas, Miami, Philadelphia, and Atlanta—blamed low international demand, with some saying booking pace was trending below even typical summer expectations. The remaining five host cities are spread out between Canada and Mexico, comprised of Mexico City, Guadalajara, and Monterrey in Mexico and Toronto and Vancouver in Canada. This year is the first time since 2002 that a World Cup has been hosted by multiple countries, and may be among the most politically charged one yet following a year of high tensions after the U.S. imposed tariffs globally, including on its co-bidders. All of this combined, the hotels say, makes the World Cup a little more than a blip on the map.
“Many respondents describe the tournament as a ‘non-event’ in these cities,” the report said.
Unique challenges for the 2026 World Cup
Total expenditures for the World Cup—including from host cities, FIFA, investors, and tourists—will likely top $13.9 billion, FIFA estimates. The U.S. alone is expected to spend more than $11 billion to host the event. However, analysts have cast doubt on FIFA’s ability to deliver on its economic promises. An Oxford Economists report published last month predicted “some GDP growth” as a result of the games over the summer, but only temporary job gains in the leisure and hospitality sectors.
Just a few weeks away, the first match will kick off on June 11. The tournament coincides with a period of tumultuous travel some warn could hamper attendance. People already have travel wariness thanks to the Iran war, now entering its second month, which led to a de facto closure of the Strait of Hormuz and has left oil prices elevated above pre-war levels.
Last month, Goldman Sachs warned Europe’s jet fuel supplies could fall below its key 23-day shortage threshold—though carriers including the Swiss International Air Lines say they have enough supply for flights through the end of June. Still, the average price of a transcontinental flight rose from $167 in late February to $414 in mid-March, according to a Deutsche Bank analysis.
The costs of attending the World Cup stateside go beyond just airfare. Tickets for many of the matches top $1,000. And that’s on the lower end: The World Cup final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey on July 19 costs nearly $33,000. NJ Transit, which originally had a round-trip ticket package from New York City to MetLife Stadium for $150, lowered it to $105 last week following public backlash over the massive price hike. On average, tickets from New York Penn Station to the stadium are typically $13 for the 45 minute train ride.
The FIFA spokesperson said tickets have been released at various price categories, including a minimum of 1,000 tickets at $60 each for each match, including the final.
Though Infantino said the steep ticket costs were a product of “market rates”
in the U.S., where the entertainment economy is so developed, even
President Donald Trump admitted the tickets were too expensive.
“I wouldn’t pay it either, to be honest,” Trump told The New York Post last week.
That’s in addition to some soccer fans’ decision to snub the U.S. during the World Cup. In January, 170,000 people
in the Netherlands signed a petition calling on the Dutch national team
to boycott the event following the Trump administration’s threats to
take over Greenland. The Dutch cabinet rejected the boycott.
Lisa
Delpy Neirotti, director of the Sport Management Program at the George
Washington University, said while politics may be a factor to consider,
soccer fans will be more swayed by ticket and travel prices than
anything else.
“The geopolitical issues are a very small piece of it,” she told Fortune.
Why global sporting events usually fall short
Exorbitant costs and logistical barriers are certainly a drag for soccer fans looking to attend the
World
Cup, Delpy Neirotti said, but international sporting events have a
history of setting unrealistically high economic aspirations.
“Everybody wants to hear big numbers, right?” she said. “That gets everybody excited. That gets everybody to buy in.”
Part
of those unrealistic expectations may come from the events’ propensity
to spend beyond initial projections. A 2024 University of Oxford study
found the previous three summer Olympic Games (prior to Paris’ in 2024,
where researchers did not collect data) exceeded budgets by 185% as a
result of immense security requirements and infrastructure demands. The
1976 Olympic Summer Games in Montreal cost $1.5 billion more than its
project’s $124 million budget, and it took taxpayers about 30 years to
pay off the 10-digit debt.
That’s not the case for all international games. The 2022 World Cup in Qatar contributed nearly 1%
of the country’s GDP, though the event was more likely to attract
out-of-country tourists given the country’s smaller population. Its
small size also meant a stronger concentration of venues, which made it
easier for attendees to view multiple matches in one trip.
Delpy
Neirotti does not expect an economic disaster from this year’s World
Cup, but does warn that expectations should be tempered. There’s a
likelihood that as most tickets become available, more soccer fans will
book last-minute trips to give the hospitality and tourism sector a
boost.
“It does
bring economic impact, but it may not bring the impact that the report
said,” Delpy Neirotti concluded. “You get all this hype, and then it
kind of falls short. So then people are disappointed, but they still
should be happy with it.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
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[Update May 13]
Why So Many World Cup Tickets Remain Unsold One Month Out
Margaret Fleming
Mon, May 11, 2026
Only
a month remains until the World Cup descends upon the U.S., Mexico, and
Canada, and thousands of tickets remain unsold, listed at extremely
high prices.
Prices are starting to fall—barely—but FIFA will
need a more dramatic drop in costs if it wants to fill stadiums, experts
tell Front Office Sports.
FIFA opened its alleged final “last
minute” sales window on April 1, saying it would stay open through the
tournament. This would be the first time that any member of the public
could access tickets straight from FIFA without needing to be selected
at random, or go through a federation or special offer.
But FIFA
didn’t put up all remaining tickets on April 1. The global governing
body made some tickets available that day, but said at the time that
“tickets will continue to be released on a rolling basis,” and it has
continued slowly releasing more inventory as the tournament gets closer.
Sometimes,
FIFA announces its releases, as the global governing body did for two
drops on April 22 and May 7. The official announcement came two days before the April 22 drop and one day before
the May 7 window. In these cases, fans wait for hours in the virtual
queue, and when they finally get access to view tickets, they find
prices that are higher than they want to pay, or experience glitches and
error messages.
In other instances, the inventory fluctuates
without an official announcement. On Monday, some ticket categories had
appeared, disappeared, or changed prices from last week’s official drop.
In both cases, FIFA is drip-feeding tickets to a tournament that is already seeing unprecedented demand.
“It’s
revenue maximization from FIFA,” Kieran Maguire, author and podcast
cohost of The Price of Football, tells FOS. “I think FIFA have abandoned
the traditional soccer fan and they’re pursuing a strategy of making as
much money as they can, so are therefore creating artificial scarcity
in the market by having small drops of tickets.”
Thousands of
tickets remain unsold. The issue isn’t a lack of interest—FIFA said in
January it received more than 500 million ticket requests—or a lack of
inventory. Plenty of fans are interested in buying tickets, and plenty
of tickets are still available for them.
FIFA’s problem is that
demand does not exist at the prices that are being listed, ticketing
expert Jim McCarthy tells FOS. “It would not be hard to sell this
tournament, sell every single ticket of this tournament, but the prices
are aggressive,” McCarthy says.
When FOS participated in the
official ticket drops on April 22 and May 7, the virtual queue took
several hours each time. Once inside, the April 22 drop was riddled with
error messages, allowing only two match selections amid the warnings
before inadvertently returning to the queue. On May 7, the system
allowed more selections—FOS observed high prices for host nations and a
ticket to the final listed at nearly $33,000—before again reverting to
the line.
FIFA did not respond to questions about its strategy or
whether it would lower prices in the future, nor did it confirm whether
it had released more tickets on Monday.
Will FIFA Lower Prices?
On the secondary market, prices for group-stage matches are already coming down. But on FIFA’s primary platform, prices largely remain stubbornly high.
FIFA
is using dynamic pricing for the World Cup as it did at last summer’s
Club World Cup. Those prices eventually plummeted to nearly nothing;
FIFA offered $4 tickets to see Lionel Messi in Miami and free tickets in Seattle.
The Record
There are some signs of ticket prices dipping, although not to levels that would make them widely affordable.
For
the U.S. opener against Paraguay in Los Angeles on June 11, the prices
for the highest-tier tickets, Front Categories 1 and 2, fell from $4,105
and $2,330 last week to $3,420 and $2,135, respectively, by Monday. For
the U.S. against Australia in Seattle, FIFA added four Category 2 seats
for $570. And after listing a Front Category 1 ticket to the final last
week for nearly $33,000, FIFA had two tickets in that tier for $10,990
each on Monday.
With one month until the tournament, FIFA still
has thousands of tickets available. For the U.S.-Paraguay opener, 10
sections each still showed an inventory of more than 100 available
tickets on Monday. But FIFA is still keeping prices for those seats
high. In one section alone, FIFA had more than 250 Category 1 tickets
listed for $2,735 each.
McCarthy compares the phenomenon to the concert industry’s “Blue Dot Fever,”
a recent trend of artists canceling tours due to lagging ticket sales,
with a name that alludes to blue dots that appear on Ticketmaster’s
website to represent unsold seats. He names Jennifer Lopez trying to
model her tour off Taylor Swift as an example.
“She could have a
very successful tour, but not in that way,” McCarthy says. “There’s a
disconnect between the actual level of demand, both in terms of quantity
and price, and what she put out as a product.”
Some of the
prices are less costly. The Jordan-Algeria match in Northern California
had a get-in price of $140 on Monday, while Germany against Côte
d’Ivoire in Toronto had a cheapest ticket of $285.
But many group-stage matches still cost several hundred or even thousands of dollars.
On
Monday, $380 was a common get-in price for many matches including
Czechia–South Africa, Curaçao–Côte d’Ivoire, Algeria-Austria,
Turkey-Paraguay, and Qatar-Swizterland. For tournament favorites like
Spain, England, and the Netherlands, FIFA had a get-in price of more
than $1,000 for some group-stage matches.
Last week, FIFA president Gianni Infantino defended the high ticket prices,
saying “we have to apply market rates” and 25% of group-stage matches
cost less than $300, which he said was cheaper than a college football
game. But Maguire pushes back on that idea.
“For many countries
who have qualified for the tournament, they are not wealthy, their GDP
is relatively low,” Maguire says. “To therefore be treated as, ‘Well,
because it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, we’re FIFA and we’re
going to scalp you, and then blame it upon America,’ I think is
incredibly harsh.”
The post Why So Many World Cup Tickets Remain Unsold One Month Out appeared first on Front Office Sports. ============================================
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