FIFA President Gianni Infantino has suggested that every match for the 2026 men’s World Cup will be sold out and claimed FIFA have received requests for over one million tickets per game for 77 of the 104 matches during the tournament in North America.
The games will be played in June and July this summer across Canada, Mexico and the United States.
On Wednesday, Infantino appeared as a guest at the World Liberty Forum hosted at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida. World Liberty Financial, who convened the invite-only business conference, is co-founded by President Trump and his three sons Eric, Donald Jr. and Barron are also among the co-founders.
The conference included appearances from business leaders, senators and investors, with Chelsea co-owner Behdad Eghbali speaking alongside AC Milan’s owner Gerry Cardinale, while artist Nicki Minaj also appeared. During the event, Infantino was spotted wearing a USA baseball cap with the numbers 45 and 47 etched into the side, representing Trump’s two periods as President.
In a subsequent interview with CNBC, Infantino provided details on the progress of FIFA’s controversial ticketing policy for the World Cup, with record-high prices branded by supporters groups as a “monumental betrayal”, while also bringing criticism from politicians including UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani.
He repeated FIFA’s claim, which cannot be independently verified, that the organization has received “requests for over 500 million tickets — 508 million, to be precise — for around 7 million tickets that we have on sale.”
FIFA has sought to resist suggestions that many of these requests may be bots, claiming that every request was “validated by unique credit card data.”
Infantino puts on the USA baseball cap (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
For the first time, Infantino also provided insight into more granular data, although he did not clarify the full spread of requests across games.
Asked if he is concerned that high ticket prices risk alienating supporters, Infantino replied: “It’s not a problem in the sense that the demand is there. We have 104 matches in total, which if you look at the audience figures, six billion people will watch these matches. Obviously the price is a consequence of that and 77 out of these 104 matches have received requests for over 1 million tickets. Every match is already sold out. We keep some tickets back for some last minute sales, of course, but every match is sold out.”
When asked by The Athletic to clarify how, exactly, games can be sold out if tickets are being held for later sales, a FIFA source indicated that Infantino had misspoke and that he was instead meaning to say that FIFA expect all the games to sell out. They were also unable to immediately clarify Infantino’s calculations when he claimed an audience of six billion for the World Cup — the global population is eight billion.
Infantino said he expected FIFA revenues from the tournament to exceed $11 billion, while claiming that the U.S. economy will receive $30 billion in economic impact, but such studies are often treated with skepticism. FIFA stands to profit not only from initial sales but also from resales on its own platform, where it will charge 15 per cent commissions on both the seller and buyer, meaning it would make $30 from the sale of a $100 ticket.
Infantino claimed FIFA had received requests from “over 200 countries in the world.”
He said: “Everyone wants to come here and everyone wants to be part of something special. People generally want to experience some emotions and be part of something happy and feel something special. All these requests coming from all over the world show that people want to come, celebrate, have fun and — they are all a little bit, maybe tired and fed up of all this negativity that is portrayed the whole time, right? We need some good news and some good things.”
Infantino, who flew into Miami on a Qatari private jet earlier this week, also spent time in the Trump orbit on Thursday, where he was an attendee at a Board of Peace event hosted by the U.S. president. The body, founded and led by Trump, has so far been shunned by America’s allies in NATO, but nations including Hungary, Israel, Belarus, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia, Argentina and Turkey have joined.
Infantino has previously hailed Trump’s foreign policy, even presenting him with FIFA’s inaugural Peace Prize during the World Cup draw in December.
Later that month, an official complaint was submitted to FIFA’s Ethics Committee by FairSquare, a non-profit organization and advocacy group which focuses mainly on global labor migration rights, political repression and sport. It alleged “repeated breaches” of FIFA’s duty of political neutrality by Infantino, while also requesting an investigation into the process that saw Trump receive the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize.