Billy Grant, or Billy the Bee as he is widely known among England’s travelling fans, has long been making plans for next summer. It will be the ninth World Cup finals where he has followed his country, an odyssey that began with the 1990 edition in Italy — what now feels like a tournament from another time.
Flights have already been booked to take Grant to a World Cup being played across the United States, Canada and Mexico, but there are misgivings about what lies in store. Recent days, with world football governing body FIFA confirming its eye-watering match-ticket prices, have seen to that.
“What this is doing is changing the complexion of the game,” says Grant, a lifelong Brentford supporter. “FIFA might say that doesn’t matter, and it just allows others to come in, but it just won’t have the same feel. What’s really important about a World Cup is the type of people that go — those passionate fans who will follow their team anywhere. These people are now being excluded.”
This World Cup, the biggest yet with 48 nations competing, was always likely to be expensive, but the cost of attending its games has leapt to new heights.
It was confirmed on Thursday that the cheapest way to attend England’s three group games would be to buy tickets for $705 (£527) each, with those for the final starting at $4,185 (£3,128). To follow England all the way from their June 17 group opener against Croatia in Arlington, Texas, to that showpiece at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, a short distance from New York City, on July 19 would theoretically cost a fan $7,020 over the eight games.
The Football Supporters’ Association (FSA) has called these prices “scandalous” and asked the Football Association to challenge FIFA, which organises the tournament. “(FIFA president) Gianni Infantino only sees supporter loyalty as something to be exploited for profit… they are beyond shameless,” an FSA statement read. Football Supporters Europe (FSE), meanwhile, has called for the sales of “extortionate” tickets to be immediately halted.
“I’m really disappointed, and I’m angry,” says Grant. “I’ll go to certain games, but I won’t go to all the games that I might have done.
“The people I travel with just can’t afford it. Some are not going at all, some of them are picking and choosing (which) games they go to. So many people I know have thrown their plans out of the window because they don’t feel they can justify it (the expense). This has thrown a dampener on the whole tournament for me.”
FIFA, though, seems unperturbed by such complaints.
Grant at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar (credit: Billy Grant)
It released a statement on Friday night to say that roughly five million ticket requests had been submitted in the first 24 hours of the latest sales phase, the first since last week’s group-stage draw informed fans of where and when their teams would be playing their three opening-round fixtures. Among that number, FIFA says, were applications from supporters in more than 200 countries, with England and Scotland among the 10 nations showing the greatest interest.
The most loyal supporters, however, are thinking twice about attending.
The ticket scheme that guarantees each fan entry to games until their team are knocked out requires almost £5,200 to be paid to FIFA by February, with any refunds not paid until the tournament’s close in July, minus an administrative fee.
Allocations, too, are an irritant. Less than 2,000 tickets sold to England fans will be the cheapest Category 3 options, meaning every other fan will have to pay at least $430 per game. Then comes the likelihood of resale markets pushing admission higher still.
“The whole commercial model, they’re treating it like it’s a Taylor Swift concert,” says Reg Lawton, a Sheffield United fan who has followed England to the past three World Cups in Brazil, Russia and Qatar with her husband, Mark. Group-stage tickets at the latter tournament in 2022 were as cheap as £68.
“I was waiting with bated breath, knowing what FIFA are like, but they’ve surpassed my fears,” Reg says. “They’ve gone way beyond. They talk about inclusivity, but it’s absolutely despicable.”
Would she consider attending the final? “No chance. Never in a million years,” she says. “I’d rather give the money to charity than give it to FIFA. I’d be gutted (not to be there), but I’d watch it in a bar.”
The Lawtons, like Grant, have opted to base themselves in Mexico for the early stages of the tournament to negate some of the costs that come with time spent across the border in the United States. They spent the whole of last year’s European Championship in host nation Germany following England all the way to the final and estimate that, as husband and wife, total costs ran to £11,000. Qatar, they say, cost about £12,000 when staying for the duration of that competition.
“We maybe had £18,000 in our minds initially (as a budget for this World Cup), but now you’re looking more like £24,000 if you wanted to do the whole month,” says Reg, who intends to limit the England games she attends.
“There’s a dream about going to watch your team at a World Cup, but that’s now beyond a lot of people. One of our mates, who’s mad for England, said straight away he was out.”
Mark, meanwhile, wrestles with how to justify attending a tournament he believes is being pushed away from its traditional fans.
Reg and Mark Lawton at an England game (courtesy Reg and Mark Lawton)
“You’ll pay a premium for certain things, like watching Mexico at the Azteca (in Mexico City) or Brazil in Miami because it’s special, but they’re now putting crazy prices on something that isn’t even special now,” he says. “Group games can be pretty laborious. The England game in New York (the group finale against Panama at MetLife Stadium on June 27), it might not even have anything on it (in terms of qualifying for the knockout phase).
“You could spend the money, but can you justify that cost? It’s over £3,000 to go to a final and because there’s two of us, that would be close to £7,000.”
And that leads to the wider, long-term implications of the rising costs.
“It just doesn’t feel like what the World Cup should be about,” Mark adds. “I go back to Brazil (the 2014 World Cup), and you’d find people going on these mad journeys to get to games. There was a spirit to the World Cup, there was passion and an energy to the whole thing. This flies in the face of that. It doesn’t feel like the football that you love and know and want to embrace.”
England, inevitably, will still be well backed next summer. They remain one of world football’s best-supported nations and the historic demand for tickets at major tournaments leaves fans needing to attend qualifiers and friendlies to retain their position at the front of sales queues. “Caps” are awarded to every registered supporter buying tickets for an England game, with the number collected an illustration of loyalty.
“England fans are very proud of their (attendance) records,” says Thomas Concannon of the FSA and England Fans’ Embassy, a venture that has provided support for travelling fans for over three decades. “You’ll have fans where this is their 10th or 15th tournament, and they’ll never want to see that broken. They’ll keep going until they see England win something.
“I’ve been talking with another England fan who hasn’t missed a game in 15 years. And he’s looking at the possibility of ending that now.”
As perverse as it might seem, there is talk among England fans of attending the two pre-World Cup friendly games, set to be played in Florida in early June, and then returning home. Those two warm-up fixtures will be eligible for “caps”, whereas the World Cup itself, like all major tournaments, will not.
“What will be telling is the amount of what we call top cappers — the fans who have the most amount of loyalty points you can get, who don’t go (to the World Cup),” says Concannon. “I’m disgusted, but really sad about it, knowing that a lot of England fans won’t be able to go, simply because they can’t afford it. There’s fans who have done all those miles to support their team and these are the prices they’re being asked to pay.”
Concannon will be at the World Cup as long as England are, running the Fans Embassy for the group games, which will be played near Dallas, Boston and New York respectively. It had always been a given that he would also attend England’s matches along the way, paying for tickets from his own pocket. Costs for the World Cup now place doubt over that approach.
“That’s a very realistic possibility, unless anything changes,” he says. “We can provide the service we do regardless of going to the games but it would feel absolutely devastating to be out there and not go into the ground.
“I think the reality is that I can’t afford those ticket prices. Not the final. That’s £3,200 for just one game of football. I worked it out. It’s £35 a minute ( for a 90-minute match). I simply can’t justify that.”