Donald Trump has questioned the value of four-figure World Cup tickets for matches involving the US, telling the New York Post that “I wouldn’t pay it either, to be honest.”
The remark came in a phone interview with the Post, with Trump claiming he “did not know that number” for the USMNT’s opening match against Paraguay. In December, Fifa established a base price for Category 3 tickets – the cheapest available to most fans, given the small swathe of Category 4 seats at the tournament – of $1,120, according to the Guardian’s reporting at the time.
Trump’s remarks come a day after Fifa president Gianni Infantino defended ticket pricing for the 2026 World Cup, the first time the nearly century-old tournament has used dynamic pricing. The mechanism, which has become a regular practice in the US in recent years, allows ticket prices to fluctuate greatly for events in high demand.
“We have to look at the market – we are in the market in which entertainment is the most developed in the world. So we have to apply market rates,” Infantino said. “In the US it is permitted to resell tickets as well. So if you were to sell tickets at the price which is too low, these tickets will be resold at a much higher price.”
Infantino later claimed that one “cannot go to watch in the US a college game, not even speaking about a top professional game of a certain level, for less than $300,” a claim swiftly debunked by various outlets.
“I would certainly like to be there, but I wouldn’t pay it either, to be honest with you,” Trump told the Post when asked about prices for World Cup tickets.
“If people from Queens and Brooklyn and all of the people that love Donald Trump can’t go, I would be disappointed, but, you know, at the same time, it’s an amazing success,” Trump said. “I would like to be able to have the people that voted for me to be able to go.”