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Tuesday, July 8, 2025

One year from World Cup opener, questions unanswered on tickets, security

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28 days ago
20250610
FILE - The World Cup trophy is displayed before the UEFA Preliminary Draw for the 2026 FIFA World Cup soccer tournament at FIFA headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, Friday, Dec. 13, 2024. (Til Buergy/Keystone via AP, File)

FILE - The World Cup trophy is displayed before the UEFA Preliminary Draw for the 2026 FIFA World Cup soccer tournament at FIFA headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, Friday, Dec. 13, 2024. (Til Buergy/Keystone via AP, File)

Til Buergy

A year from the largest World Cup ever, there has been no an­nounce­ment on gen­er­al tick­et sales, prices for most seats, lo­ca­tion of a draw or se­cu­ri­ty arrange­ments as FI­FA has most­ly avoid­ed dis­clos­ing de­tails of an event set for 16 sta­di­ums across the Unit­ed States, Mex­i­co and Cana­da.

There is un­cer­tain­ty about whether fans from some na­tions will be wel­come — 11 of the venues are lo­cat­ed in the U.S., where all match­es will be played from the quar­ter­fi­nals on.

Se­cu­ri­ty is a con­cern, too. At the last ma­jor soc­cer tour­na­ment in the U.S., the 2024 Co­pa Amer­i­ca fi­nal at Mi­a­mi Gar­dens, Flori­da, start­ed 82 min­utes late af­ter spec­ta­tors breached se­cu­ri­ty gates.

“That was cer­tain­ly a re­minder and a wake-up call if any­body need­ed it that those types of things are go­ing to be used in terms of the ul­ti­mate as­sess­ment of whether this World Cup is suc­cess­ful,” said for­mer U.S. de­fend­er Alexi Lalas, now Fox’s lead soc­cer an­a­lyst.

U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s trav­el ban on cit­i­zens from 12 na­tions ex­empt­ed ath­letes, coach­es, staff and rel­a­tives while not men­tion­ing fans. Vice Pres­i­dent JD Vance made what could be in­ter­pret­ed as a warn­ing on May 6.

“Of course every­body is wel­come to come and see this in­cred­i­ble event. I know we’ll have vis­i­tors prob­a­bly from close to 100 coun­tries. We want them to come. We want them to cel­e­brate. We want them to watch the game,” he said. “But when the time is up they’ll have to go home. Oth­er­wise they’ll have to talk to Sec­re­tary Noem,” he added, speak­ing along­side Sec­re­tary of Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Kristi Noem.

Back in U.S. for first time in 32 years

The 1994 World Cup sparked the launch of Ma­jor League Soc­cer with 12 teams in 1996, and $50 mil­lion in World Cup prof­its seed­ed the U.S. Soc­cer Foun­da­tion, tasked with de­vel­op­ing the sport’s growth. MLS now has 30 teams, plays in 22 soc­cer spe­cif­ic sta­di­ums and has club acad­e­mies to grow the sport and im­prove tal­ent.

Next year’s tour­na­ment will in­clude 104 games, up from 64 from 1998 through 2022, and the 11 U.S. sta­di­ums are all NFL homes with lu­cra­tive lux­u­ry suites and club seat­ing. It al­so will be the first World Cup run by FI­FA with­out a lo­cal or­ga­niz­ing com­mit­tee.

“The lega­cy ini­tia­tive of 2026 is around how we en­sure that soc­cer is every­where in this coun­ty,” U.S. Soc­cer Fed­er­a­tion CEO JT Bat­son said. “How do we en­sure that every Amer­i­can can walk, ride their bike or take pub­lic tran­sit to a safe place to play soc­cer? How do we make it to where every school in Amer­i­ca has soc­cer ac­ces­si­ble to their stu­dents? And how do we make it to wher­ev­er every Amer­i­can can tru­ly see them­selves in the game?”

In­ter­est in soc­cer has vast­ly in­creased in the U.S., with Eng­land’s Pre­mier League av­er­ag­ing 510,000 view­ers per match win­dow on NBC’s net­works last sea­son and the Eu­ro­pean Cham­pi­ons League fi­nal draw­ing more than 2 mil­lion view­ers in each of the past five years on CBS. How­ev­er, CBS broad­cast just 26 of 189 Cham­pi­ons League match­es on TV in 2024-25 and streamed the rest.

MLS drew about 12.2 mil­lion fans last year, sec­ond to 14.7 mil­lion in 2023-24 for the Pre­mier League’s 20 teams, but MLS has large­ly dis­ap­peared from broad­cast TV since start­ing a 10-year con­tract with Ap­ple TV+ in 2023. Ap­ple spokesman Sam Cit­ron said the com­pa­ny does not re­lease view­er fig­ures.

In a frac­tured tele­vi­sion land­scape, dif­fer­ent deals were ne­go­ti­at­ed by FI­FA, UE­FA, MLS, the NWSL, the USSF and the five ma­jor Eu­ro­pean leagues.

“You ba­si­cal­ly have over 2,800 game win­dows per sea­son aired in the Unit­ed States and so that re­quires dis­tri­b­u­tion large­ly on stream­ing plat­forms like Para­mount+ or ES­PN+, but it’s dif­fi­cult for new fan adop­tion and it makes reach kind of chal­leng­ing,” said Ger­ry Car­di­nale, man­ag­ing part­ner of Red­Bird Cap­i­tal Part­ners, which holds con­trol­ling in­ter­ests in AC Mi­lan and Toulouse and owns a non-con­trol­ling stake of Fen­way Sports Group, par­ent of Liv­er­pool. “Kids to­day are get­ting weaned on Pre­mier League foot­ball and Se­rie A foot­ball, and when you watch that as a prod­uct, it’s hard for MLS to com­pete.”

1994 World Cup set at­ten­dance record

The 1994 World Cup, a 24-na­tion tour­na­ment, drew a record 3.58 mil­lion fans for 52 match­es. Tick­et prices ranged from $25-$75 for most first round games and $180-$475 for the fi­nal at the Rose Bowl in Pasade­na, Cal­i­for­nia.

FI­FA, which has about 800 peo­ple work­ing at an of­fice in Coral Gables, Flori­da, says it will an­nounce in­for­ma­tion on gen­er­al tick­ets in the third quar­ter. It wouldn’t say whether prices will be fixed or vari­able.

Hos­pi­tal­i­ty pack­ages are avail­able on FI­FA’s web­site through On Lo­ca­tion. For the eight match­es at MetLife Sta­di­um in East Ruther­ford, New Jer­sey, in­clud­ing the fi­nal on Ju­ly 19, prices range from $25,800 to $73,200 per per­son.

Vari­able tick­et pric­ing pos­si­ble

FI­FA ap­pears to be us­ing vari­able pric­ing for this year’s Club World Cup, played at 12 U.S. sta­di­ums from June 14 to Ju­ly 13, and some prices re­peat­ed­ly have been slashed. Mar­riott Bon­voy, a U.S. Soc­cer Fed­er­a­tion part­ner, has been of­fer­ing free tick­ets to some of its elite mem­bers.

Asked about Club World Cup tick­et sales and team base camp arrange­ments, Manolo Zu­biria, the World Cup’s chief tour­na­ment of­fi­cer, hung up four min­utes and five ques­tions in­to a tele­phone in­ter­view with The As­so­ci­at­ed Press. Bren­dan O’Con­nell, the pub­li­cist who arranged the in­ter­view, wrote in an email to the AP: “The guest was not pre­pared for those ques­tions.”

FI­FA’s me­dia re­la­tions staff would not make FI­FA pres­i­dent Gi­an­ni In­fan­ti­no avail­able to dis­cuss the tour­na­ment.

Ahead of the 1994 World Cup, FI­FA an­nounced in May 1992 the draw would take place at Las Ve­gas on Dec. 18 or 19, 1993. FI­FA has not re­vealed plans for this year’s draw but ap­pears to be plan­ning for Las Ve­gas on Dec. 5.

Reg­u­lar tick­et sales be­gan in Feb­ru­ary 1993 for the U.S. soc­cer fam­i­ly and gen­er­al first- and sec­ond-round sales start­ed that June. Fans sub­mit­ted lot­tery ap­pli­ca­tions in Oc­to­ber 1993 for games from the quar­ter­fi­nals on.

Teams could train away from World Cup cities

While not de­tail­ing tick­et­ing plans for next year’s tour­na­ment, FI­FA is spread­ing it be­yond the host cities and lists about 60 pos­si­ble base camps for teams to use, paired with ho­tels. Some are fan­cy — The Green­bri­er Re­sort in White Sul­phur Springs, West Vir­ginia — and some more Spar­tan — the Court­yard by Mar­riott Mesa at Wrigleyville West in Ari­zona.

Thou­sands of arrange­ments must be co­or­di­nat­ed. Ma­jor League Base­ball is draw­ing up its sched­ule to en­sure that the four teams whose ball­parks share park­ing lots with World Cup sta­di­ums — in Ar­ling­ton, Texas; Kansas City, Mis­souri; Philadel­phia; and Seat­tle — won’t play home games on the dates of tour­na­ment match­es.

Boris Gart­ner, pres­i­dent and part­ner of Relevent Sports, a com­mer­cial part­ner for many soc­cer or­ga­ni­za­tions, said the 2026 World Cup should be viewed as just an­oth­er step in the sport’s long-term growth in the Unit­ed States.

“If you have a clear un­der­stand­ing of the mar­ket and the au­di­ence, a clear un­der­stand­ing of the val­ue that these prop­er­ties bring to me­dia com­pa­nies, and you mix con­tent with a com­mer­cial strat­e­gy, with the right me­dia dis­tri­b­u­tion strat­e­gy, this is some­thing that will con­tin­ue to grow over the next two decades,” he said. “If more peo­ple are watch­ing the NWSL, more peo­ple are go­ing to be in­ter­est­ed in soc­cer that could po­ten­tial­ly end up watch­ing a Bun­desli­ga game or La Liga game.”

AP soc­cer: https://ap­news.com/hub/soc­cer

NEW YORK (AP) —

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