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

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) —