FIFA World Cup Turns Fandom Into an Experience Economy Moment

The last of the holiday glitter is still stuck to your shoes, but the digital economy is already dangling a shinier object: the 2026 FIFA World Cup. As our audience sharpens New Year’s intentions—tighten budgets, simplify stacks, stop paying “fees” that feel like emotional damage—soccer’s biggest spectacle is here to remind us that aspiration is a powerful currency. Especially when it comes with a kickoff time.

Soccer (football everywhere else) doesn’t need a marketing push; it’s the planet’s default language for joy, heartbreak and yelling at televisions. Next summer’s tournament expands to 48 teams and 104 matches across the U.S., Canada and Mexico, running June 11 to July 19.

Ticketing, meanwhile, is already behaving like a FinTech product launch: FIFA says the current random-selection draw phase has generated 20 million ticket requests and runs through Jan. 13, and it has introduced a fixed-price $60 “Supporter Entry Tier” for fans of qualified teams. The bad news is that the rest of the inventory can look like surge pricing with a referee’s whistle—dynamic pricing has drawn criticism, and it has pushed some seats into the high hundreds and often the thousands. In one especially spicy data point, AP reported that some loyal fans were facing $4,185 for final tickets before getting access to $60 seats through the new tier.

In that spirit, here are nine over-the-top World Cup buys—practical, bizarre, or delightfully unnecessary—for anyone who looks at a four-figure ticket and thinks: “Great. What else can we monetize?”

Platinum Access: the “I have a host” lifestyle
Official hospitality sellers are offering premium packages that bundle tickets with lounges, food and beverages, and “we’ve thought of everything” service, scaling up to platinum-style customization. Translation: you don’t attend a match, you enter an experience economy.

A private suite, aka the expense report’s final boss
Suites promise preferred entry, private space and dedicated service, perfect for closing a deal, impressing a client, or hiding from the friend who insists on explaining offside. Bonus: you can cheer in climate-controlled privacy.

Venue Series: commit to a stadium, not a team
Some packages sell a “Venue Series” that gets you into multiple matchdays at one host venue—often four to nine matches, depending on the stadium. The upside is simplicity. The downside is you’ll start speaking in kickoff times like they’re earnings calls.

Follow My Team: fandom as supply chain management
“Follow My Team” offerings bundle group-stage matches plus a Round-of-32 game, regardless of location. It’s a travel product disguised as a sports package: your bracket becomes a project plan, complete with contingency routes and a folder called “tickets_final_FINAL.pdf.”

The $60 unicorn ticket hunt
Yes, there is a fixed $60 tier. Yes, it’s limited. And yes, it’s allocated via national federations with “loyal fan” criteria. The over-the-top move is treating this like a sneaker drop: join supporter clubs, set alerts and cultivate patience as a core competency.

Stadium-hopping by private jet (or at least private-jet energy)
The tournament is spread across three countries and 16 host cities, with the majority of matches in the U.S. Commercial flights are fine. But if your definition of “efficiency” includes a chartered aircraft and an assistant who knows your seat preferences, congratulations: you’ve turned soccer into corporate travel theater.

The luxury rental arms race
Hotels will surge. Short-term rentals will surge. And that “investment property” friend will rediscover “event premium.” Your over-the-top play is renting a place that turns a watch party into a pop-up hospitality suite: rooftop, catering and enough bathrooms that halftime doesn’t become a queue-based morality play.

Build a home stadium
If ticketing feels like dynamic pricing meets emotional pricing, bring the World Cup home. Projector. Surround sound. Streaming redundancy. Smart lighting that pulses with goals. A fridge stocked by kickoff time. This is not consumer electronics—it’s a domestic infrastructure project.

Museum-grade memorabilia
For the purest flex, buy history. Six Lionel Messi shirts worn during Argentina’s 2022 World Cup run sold for $7.8 million at auction. That’s not merchandise; that’s an heirloom for people who have portfolio managers.

The World Cup is supposed to be about the game: the noise, the tension, the glorious absurdity of a tournament that can turn strangers into best friends for 90 minutes. But it will also be a masterclass in modern commerce—ticket tiers, hospitality bundles and demand curves that look like they belong in a pricing committee meeting. So as you head into the New Year, consider this your permission slip: pick one extravagance, keep it playful, and—just as importantly—enable two-factor authentication on your wallet—digital and otherwise.