The $13bn World Cup: how the numbers stack up on Fifa’s 2026 balance sheet

A World Cup that Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, billed at the draw last December as “the greatest event that humanity has ever seen” will certainly be the most lucrative competition in sporting history.

Fifa has spent the last few years upgrading its revenue projections, with the most recent financial report stating that the world governing body will make $13bn (£9.6bn) from the four-year cycle culminating in this summer’s tournament, almost $9bn of which will be brought in this year.

By way of contrast, the most recent edition of the original Greatest Show on Earth, the Paris 2024 Olympics, generated €4.48bn ($5.24bn).

The financial importance of the World Cup will be spelt out further on Thursday when Infantino will provide further details of Fifa’s draft budget for 2027 to 2030 at its annual congress in Vancouver, with another big increase expected.

It seems hard to believe now that in financial terms the World Cup trailed the Olympics until the 2010 tournament in South Africa, which brought in revenue of $4.19bn compared to the $3.23bn at current exchange rates produced by the London 2012 Games. Although it has been Fifa’s decision to take the tournament to the United States that appears to have taken its earnings to another stratosphere.

From increasing revenues by 18% between the 2018 World Cup in Russia and the Qatar edition four years later, a cycle that brought in $7.5bn, Fifa’s yield will have increased by another 73% by the end of the summer, based on its projections.

As a result of exceeding its revenue target for 2022-26, in the most recent financial report published last month Fifa increased its budget for the next four years to $14bn.

As Ricardo Fort, a sponsorship consultant who has negotiated commercial deals with Fifa on behalf of Visa and Coca Cola, puts it: “If you ignore the noise and the politics then the work done by Fifa’s commercial team is very impressive.”

The money spinners

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The sale of global TV rights is Fifa’s biggest money spinner, with forecast revenue from broadcast deals projected up from $3.4bn in Qatar and $3.1bn in Russia four years earlier.

Fifa’s controversial decision to expand the World Cup from 32 to 48 teamshas clearly played a major part in this growth, as with the number of matches increasing from 64 to 104 it simply has far more content to sell to broadcasters, while the kick-off times are also more attractive to the most lucrative markets in North America and Europe than was the case four years ago.

Beyond the happenstance of tournament size and location Fifa has made some significant innovations, bringing in extra revenue by selling TV rights for the Women’s World Cup as a standalone property for the first time during this cycle, as well as monetising social media by selling rights to live-stream the first 10 minutes of matches on TikTok and YouTube, which it is hoped will drag younger fans towards the network coverage.

Second in value for Fifa to broadcast deals is ticket sales and hospitality at around $3bn, the biggest driver of growth from the $950m made from matchdays in Qatar.

Again the sheer number of matches and the demand driven by the large North American market has been the key, with the latter in particular enabling Fifa to really push the envelope on ticket prices.

While Fifa’s use of dynamic pricing makes attempts to calculate average prices futile, in an official complaint sent to the European Commission last month campaign group Football Supporters Europe claimed that the minimum cost for a disabled fan seeking to watch their team from the first match to the final would be $6,900 for tickets alone, five times more than in Qatar.

As for the final at New Jersey’s MetLife Stadium, renamed the New York New Jersey stadium for the World Cup, on July 19, prices start at $4,185, seven times the cost of the cheapest ticket for the final four years ago, and more than 40 times the cost of the most affordable seat at the 2024 European Championship final in Germany. The most expensive ticket for the final is $10,990, nearly seven times the price of the top priced ticket for the 2022 final in Qatar.

In their bid to host the tournament in 2018 the USA, Canada and Mexico estimated that the average ticket price for the final would be $1,408.

Despite widespread complaints, demand appears to be outstripping supply, with Infantino telling CNBC last month that Fifa has received over 500 million applications for the seven million seats available, although many remain on sale. Sixteen cities are hosting matches – 11 in the US, three in Mexico and two in Canada.

“In the last four weeks we have had requests for a thousand years of World Cups,” Infantino said. “We have received ticket requests from over 200 countries as everyone wants to be part of something special. The prices have been fixed, but in the US there is a thing called dynamic pricing which means they can go up as well as down. That’s part of the market we’re in. It’s not a problem as the demand is there.”

Fifa has also benefited from huge demand from commercial partners and sponsors, which will bring in a record $2.7bn, plus a further $670m from licensing deals.

“We have seen unprecedented interest from brands across the globe,” Fifa’s chief business officer, Romy Gai, told the Business of Soccer Conference in Atlanta last month. “This is already the most successful commercial programme in Fifa’s history, and we are still building momentum.”

Fifa has signed 16 global partner deals with the likes of Adidas, Aramco and Coca Cola, as well as myriad regional and local sponsorships, and while the strength of the North American market has again been significant, Fort claims Fifa’s commercial team deserve credit for their innovative approach.

“In the past there was a fixed fee for a certain set of rights, and it was all very structured,” Fort says. “For this World Cup they have shown much greater flexibility.

“Companies are being offered basic commercial rights, plus the opportunity to bolt-on extras for an additional fee. They can add World Cup experiences for guests and clients, for example, or do multi-regional deals.”

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Where the cash goes

As a not-for-profit organisation Fifa says it will reinvest at least $11.67bn of its $13bn

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