One hundred and fifty million requests for a ticket to the 2026 World Cup: this is the data provided by Gianni Infantino, during the World Sport Summit, underway in Dubai. “In recent days – said the FIFA president – there has been a great debate about tickets and their prices. As I was saying, we have six, seven million tickets on sale. And we started the sales phase more or less two weeks ago. Now tell me, in your opinion, in these two weeks, how many ticket requests have we received? Maybe five million, maybe ten million, maybe twenty million. Well, I can tell you because in two weeks, in 15 days, we have received 150 million ticket requests, so 10 million ticket requests every single day.”
“This – added Infantino – shows how powerful the World Cup is. The interesting thing is that, obviously, in first place is one of the host countries, the United States. In second and third place are Germany and the United Kingdom. We will have six to seven million people in the stadiums, there will be six billion people watching from home. Of course, we will generate over 10 billion in revenue, which we will reinvest in the game around the world.”
The FIFA president has returned to respond to too many accusations soccer: “Maybe in some parts of the world there is too much soccerbut there certainly isn’t enough in other parts of the world. So, from our point of view, we have to try to find the right balance between the soccer of clubs and the soccer of national teams, between significant and insignificant matches: this is why we are investing billions of dollars in the development of soccer all over the world,” he said, boasting the 100 Fifa academies in as many countries.
As for the Club World Cup, “For 120 years FIFA has focused on the national teams, it is important to also focus on the clubs, because the soccer of clubs is the soccer that everyone plays. Only a minority of players play for the national teams, but all players play for a club.”
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