You can only push people so far.
That’s the sentence FIFA cannot say out loud. That’s the sentence that On Location may be whispering internally. The host cities don’t want to admit it, not yet, not while there’s still time to hope a wave of visitors is coming.
But it’s the truth.
The extraction machine that powered live sports and entertainment for decades has hit its limit.
The World Cup.
Blue dots. No “heat.” Manipulated on-sale windows.
This is the moment that illusion broke for all the world to see.
Not because the tournament is a failure. Because the model underneath it finally asked for more than people would give.
Four Forces
Nothing breaks from a single crack. At the World Cup, four forces converged.
First, political hostility.
The Trump administration’s war on Iran doubled jet fuel prices. Visitors from certain countries are being asked to pay bonds to enter the United States. ICE raids in host cities. A president saying visitors might not be safe.
The American brand, already polarizing, became actively unwelcoming.
That’s not a travel advisory. That’s a flashing sign saying, “You aren’t welcome” with a press secretary telling you, “Don’t believe your lying eyes.”
Second, prohibitive costs.
Ticket prices are expensive, excessive even. Local or visitor, the math doesn’t add up.
Travel within in the United States is expensive. And, the tournament stretches across three countries.
Matches are far apart.
Hotels jacked up rates expecting windfall demand and windfall profits.
Instead, silence.
The prices are dropping. The gouge backfired.
Third, the global cost of living crisis.
People are stretched everywhere. Not just in one market. Everywhere.
The disposable income that powered premium experiences was borrowed against a future that no longer looks the same.
Credit is tighter.
Households are pulling back.
The money isn’t sitting in accounts waiting to be spent. It was never there.
Don’t believe me?
Just look at the record high consumer debt load.
Fourth, sheer scale.
Seven million plus tickets.
At premium prices?
In a fragmented host geography?
During a cost of living crisis?
Under an unwelcoming political administration?
That’s not a sales challenge. That’s the impossible dressed up as ambition.
The Denial Playbook
Given these four forces, we see the denial of this situation playing out in numerous ways.
FIFA keeps pumping the message that demand is off the charts.
Then, new purchase windows appear. New seating levels materialize.
On May 6th, FIFA announced another “limited” on-sale for May 7.
Ticketing windows become tools of PR. Each release becomes a headline.
All publicity is good publicity…am I right?
Each release masks the reality: if sales were truly there, limited sales wouldn’t be necessary. The tickets would already be sold.
You’ve told us how much demand there is for the tournament.
Who are we to believe?
Each on-sale isn’t a sales event. It is a signal that the previous sales events were theatre and that sales aren’t really what you say they are.
The official posture is nothing to see here. But the people watching point out that this looks like a replay of last year’s Club World Cup…where empty seats became an ongoing joke.
The organization keeps pressing every “business as usual” button.
The problem: the fans aren’t buying it.
On Location is running the same playbook that has burned them before. Hold out until the end. The premium pitch keeps rolling:
“The Experience of a Lifetime.”
“Once in a Generation.”
But in certain markets, they’ve quietly introduced single seat suite sales with cheap snacks included.
The premium promise, reduced to a can of soda, a bag of chips, and a seat in a suite with you and a dozen of your closest “friends.”
On Location has been here before. TKO’s own CFO called the Paris Olympics “a loss-making event” for the company.
What does that look like in real numbers?
A $252M loss. $780M spent to generate $528M in sales. Including an $86M write down on unsold tickets.
Five weeks before the World Cup?
FIFA and On Location have quietly revised their numbers down.
Those single-seat tickets in suites?
“Suite Essentials” from inventory initially intended for groups.
The host cities are a split screen.
Philadelphia and Atlanta might be the only American cities with a real grasp on making this a fan event, not an extraction opportunity.
New York City created fan fests in every borough, a genuine effort to bring the tournament to the community. But other cities have canceled their fan fests entirely.
NJ Transit is charging $150 for a roundtrip fare to the Meadowlands.
Transportation authorities across the country saw a payday and priced accordingly.
The partnership between FIFA and its hosts is no longer a partnership. Its every city for itself.
All three of these examples share one belief that holds the denial together: This is the Biggest World Cup EVER.
That’s true because we believe it.
So the demand will materialize. The seats will fill. The hotels will be booked. The fan fests will thrive.
People will spend the money.
Any day now.
It’s the Identity Mirage at full scale. The Biggest World Cup Ever can’t fail.
So…the signals must be noise.
The Shattering
These signals aren’t just meaningless noise.
Brokers have pointed out that FIFA partners seem to be selling tickets below listed face value on the secondary market.
FIFA has released blocks of hotel rooms.
Hotel prices are falling.
Some host cities are calling the World Cup a non-event.
Not privately. Publicly.
The England FA didn’t sell out its allocation.
Secondary market executives are saying sales have dried up.
Six flashing lights. All at once. Pointing in the same direction.
The “Biggest World Cup Ever” was a declaration. A promise.
Now it’s a prayer.
The Scorpion and the Frog
Here’s the part that makes this uncomfortable for everyone…not just FIFA.
The cities, the transportation authorities, stadiums, state and federal governments, everyone…they made these deals with their eyes wide open.
Many of the deals were terrible.
People knew FIFA’s reputation. People knew the terms of the contracts.
They’d seen the economic impact promises fail, time and time again. Across multiple tournaments, multiple sports, and multiple scenarios.
You know the parable of the scorpion and the frog. The scorpion tells the frog it won’t sting him if he helps him across the river.
Once the frog and the scorpion are on the other side of the river, the scorpion stings.
Why?
Because it’s a scorpion.
That’s where so many organizations find themselves now…surprised they’ve been stung by the scorpion.
Everyone was complicit in the extraction machine that this World Cup always promised to be.
The cities competed for the privilege. Transit authorities saw the captive audience. Governments waved guarantees and offered subsidies.
The fans would absorb the costs…of course.
The machine worked…because everyone was going to play their part.
Until they didn’t and the machine wanted more than people would pay.
Then…the whole thing started to snap.
The Man Who Can Make It Right
Gianni Infantino isn’t powerless here.
He runs FIFA. He has the authority and responsibility to make hard decisions.
He could demand honesty inside FIFA.
He could push back when a host president says visitors might not be safe.
He could look at the empty seats, the falling hotel demand, the cities calling his tournament a non-event, and ask the question nobody in FIFA seems to want to answer: what’s really going on, and what are we going to do about it?
He hasn’t.
Instead, we got a FIFA Peace Prize. We got a celebration of his tenure. Silence when the American presidentsaid fans might not be safe attending matches.
This is Strategic Drift at a human level.
A leader surrounded by people…but will anyone tell him the truth?
The pomp of a Peace Prize. The pageantry of a celebration. The sugar high of a press release touting incredible demand.
While all the signals scream that the model is breaking.
The tragedy is that all of these challenges could be dealt with…fixed.
But there may be no one in the room to tell him the truth before it’s too late.
The History of This Break
FIFA didn’t create this moment.
This story began the first time a fan looked at a ticket price and felt like a mark. The first time a city was told “build the stadium or we move” and that building didn’t change anything except the owners made more money and the fans were priced out. The first time a touring artist canceled shows because tickets didn’t sell and blamed “routing issues.”
The Super League protests in England. Fan revolts over ticket price rises in sports and entertainment around the globe. Empty seats that outnumber fans at regular season NBA and MLB games. Concert on-sales that go bust and the tours disappear.
It isn’t just sports.
It’s every entertainment product.
The TV money went up for decades. Fans paid more for tickets. This papered over the cracks.
Sponsors bought sponsorships with tickets…that filled a crack.
Brokers speculated.
The “Number Go Up” economy kept on rolling.
Slowly. Then all at once.
That’s how the extraction economy broke down. Not with a sudden collapse. With a cascade that only looks sudden because no one was paying attention to the cracks forming.
The Strategy Document That Tells Us Everything
FIFA’s own strategic objectives begin with a promise: “Football Unites the World.”
Then: eleven objectives.
Revise statues. Reform the transfer system. Deliver fan engagement…with AI mentioned so you know they are serious. Youth tournaments. Develop players, coaches, referees. Social responsibility. International matches. Deliver the greatest Women’s World Cup. Ensure the 2026 World Cup is the Greatest Show on Earth. A new Club World Cup in 2025. Achieve a minimum of $11 billion in revenue.
Eleven objectives. A checklist dressed up as a strategy.
Action dressed as ambition.
Financialization hidden in football.
Money. Scale. Spectacle.
Only one about real development of the game.
What about the kickaround?
What about the moment when the kid learns to kick a ball in the backyard? The game of World Cup on the elementary school playground? The rec league? The coaches? The first kit? The first match?
The moments that build a lifelong fan. The ones that will buy tickets now and into the future. The fans who will travel halfway around the world to fill a stadium to watch their team.
These moments are completely absent.
I’m sure the defense for this would be: “We give the money back to the FAs. We develop the game.”
Money without a plan can end up as corruption with a press release. No protections. No direction. No accountability for whether the funds actually deliver a stronger game.
The checks are cut. The impact is assumed. The money disappears into federation politics, administrative bloat, or worse.
The cycle is almost perfect: extract from fans, cities, anyone. Give money to FAs with little or no real strategy. The money vanishes. The game doesn’t develop. The next generation’s connection frays.
Extraction gets harder.
FIFA needs more events, more revenue, more extraction to be able to give back more to the game.
That’s not a development model.
More isn’t always better.
The First Real Move
The fix is not a new ticketing strategy. Definitely not a better dynamic pricing algorithm. Or a single seat in a suite with some snacks because “premium.”
The fix is remembering that the entire economic pyramid rests on something that happens before anyone ever buys a ticket.
If football truly unites the world, the starting point is falling in love with the game for the first time.
A kick around at the park.
Learning to kick the ball in the backyard as a baby.
That first rec match.
The moment you discover your first favorite player.
Those moments are the foundation of everything FIFA claims to protect.
These are also the moments that the extraction model has ignored in the pursuit of “giving back to the game” because the kid in the backyard has no money. No transaction value. No premium desire.
But…that kid is the future of the game.
Without her, you don’t have an adult fan. No ticket buyer. No broadcast audience. No sponsor.
The model consumes without creating.
That’s why it is breaking.
Listening starts at the grassroots. Local fans. The FAs that develop the game from the ground up.
Listening starts with an understanding that filling stadiums in 2030 and beyond begins with protecting the kick around, making the game accessible, and getting the game everywhere.
Not with dynamic pricing. With playgrounds.
The Biggest Ever was a mirage. The extraction machine is on life support.
There is still time to salvage the 2026 World Cup…to make it The Greatest Show on Earth.
But that won’t start with winning the extraction game and protecting the mirage. It begins with something purer.
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