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Anyone Need Tickets? World Cup 2026
14/07/2026
John Williams, University Fellow in Sociology, looks at the ticketing logistics of knock-out sporting events.
The knock-out stages of any major international football tournament are fraught with logistical challengers for both organisers and fans. And even for academic researchers. For one thing, often the countries boasting some of the largest attending fan bases – Paraguay, Ecuador, Columbia, Brazil, and even the Scots and the Dutch for World Cup 2026 – have now gone home. By the quarter-final stages, all the host countries had also all been eliminated. So, how are stadiums to be filled?
The logistics of transferring ticket access from defeated parties to those still involved was complex enough in the age of paper tickets, but in today’s digital world, with all tickets now issued electronically, the challenges can be even more complex – and costly. Back in the dark ages when I was a researcher at major tournaments we were often supplied, in advance by funders, with paper match tickets, including for future semi-finals and finals. But the last-16 and quarter-finals were always more problematic. Where would your object country’s fans end up? Occasionally, you could pick up tickets immediately after games from supporters whose country had just been eliminated. It was a heartless task.
At the World Cup in Italy back in 1990, I was funded for research by the UK government and the FA, and was initially stuck in the island prison that was Sardinia for the group stages. Here the English, Dutch and the Italian riot police fought it out over who was boss. On the evening of the England v Holland clash earlier that day, I was drinking with British journalists in a local bar. A dishevelled fan walked in, arm in a sling. He was a young carpenter from the south of England who had arrived just that morning for the game and had been attacked with batons by the police. He had missed the match, spending most of the day in a local clinic and he was soon flying home. We commiserated. But he insisted that he had actually had a great time: ‘What an adventure! What a story I have to tell my mates.’ Such was fandom and English football travel back in the 1990s.
Later, I picked up a ticket for the last-16 Ireland v Romania tie from a hotel room in Rome. They were being dished out by an FAI official from a cardboard box, for cash, at face value. No questions asked. Things were a little more complicated in Naples, where England faced Cameroon in the quarter-finals. We had no tickets, but the market was pretty flat – the African travelling contingent was tiny. And back then you could buy or sell pretty much anything on the streets of Naples. (I suspect you still can do today.) My researcher and I bought two tickets from a local guy at half face value – about £10 each. Our only problem was that the tickets were for the Cameroon section of the stadium, so we danced and sang the night away with our new African friends, despite Gary Lineker steering England home. I next saw England lose honourably to Germany in the semi-final in Turin, and then had a ticket for the worst World Cup final in history, when Germany beat Maradona’s Argentina 1-0, in Rome. A researcher’s life can be hard.
In Portugal for the Euros in 2004, and now working on a Home Office grant, we needed tickets for the Portugal v England quarter-final match in Lisbon – and this time the local market was red-hot. My researcher eventually found a willing scalper and we bought tickets on the street at four times face value. We could at least now complete our interviews and in-ground observations, but England lost. I had a ticket in hand for the Portugal v Greece final, which Greece won, so there was some Karma right there. But claiming research expenses later was not so easy; on-street scalpers do not typically provide receipts.
Much more recently, in 2022 in Paris, I was completing a book and so I needed to be at the Real Madrid v Liverpool Champions League final. On the morning of the game, sitting in a Paris café, I was starting to panic: I still had no digital ticket. But I had teamed up with mates and a young guy I knew, and he was tec-savvy about on-line ticketing. He found us two tickets, the best seats in the house, and they were Uefa endorsed. We had to pay well over the odds, of course, but we knew we weren’t being scammed, a real problem in the digital ticket age. And don’t judge me, okay? I don’t like it, but sometimes – and for legitimate research purposes – you just have to find a way.
I hope no supporter in 2026 had to spend well above face value for the France v Morocco quarter-final in Boston, because it was a poor contest. The Africans seemed convinced that France are unbeatable, even after Kylian Mbappe had produced (and missed) possibly the worst penalty kick in recent World Cup history. Mbappe scored later (he does that), but fancied Morocco simply did not turn up. The house was also full (it was probably largely pre-sold) in Los Angeles, for Spain versus Belgium, a much more exciting all-European affair. The Spaniards often seem more concerned that every player has a role in their attacking moves, rather than trying directly to score. No worries: another late Merino goal for a 2-1 scoreline saw them home.
Which left England v Norway: a full day of anticipation and conjecture back home, before a touch of evening vice at the appropriately named Hard Rock Stadium in Miami. This quarter-final venue was fully expected to be flooded with the yellow shirts (and the cash) of followers of Brazil, but Norway had long since spoiled that plan. Now it was England fans who had to step up in their thousands to assail FIFA’s ticket resale service. Here, just about any price seems justifiable – as long, of course, as FIFA receive their 15% facility fee. It is a form of official scalping and some fans reported paying thousands of pounds for tickets (I knew how they felt.) Indeed, the new Cosmo’s colossal curved screen immersive fan World Cup experience – it is as if you are actually there but at a fraction of the cost – has never felt more seductive.
Somehow, courtesy of two-goal hero Jude Bellingham, England stumbled home against those unlucky Norwegian Vikings after extra time, and they will now face the even more fortunate Argentina, in Atlanta on Wednesday. Tens of thousands of South Americans will travel north, from Buenos Aires, just as they did for the very first World Cup final, against Uruguay in nearby Montevideo in 1930. The official crowd figure for that first final was 68,000, but some estimates suggest 90,000 is closer. Almost 100 years later, this is certain to be another combustible meeting; and the now legitimised resale market for tickets is guaranteed to go completely off the scale. (You could have paid much less to witness Sunday’s Sinner v Zverev festival of elite serving.) Where are the Naples on-street sellers of 1990 when you really need them?