Are FIFA exploiting fans with World Cup ticket prices?
The Athletic FC Podcast
The Athletic
4.0 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 13 December 2025
⏱️ 43 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Welcome to The Insiders, The Athletic FC’s new show digging into the off-pitch forces shaping the 2026 World Cup. Matt Slater and Adam Crafton unpack a World Cup draw that went from the surreal to the political, including surprise performances, a very prominent Gianni Infantino, and the growing influence of Donald Trump and his inner circle on football’s biggest event.
Then, why this is set to be the most expensive World Cup ever. From the eye-watering cost of tickets and who can actually afford to go, to predictions about what happens next as prices rise and fans are squeezed out.
Hosts: Matt Slater & Adam Crafton
Executive Producer: Adey Moorhead & Abi Paterson
Producers: Guy Clarke & Paul Iliffe
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Athletic FC |
| 0:03.1 | Hello, I'm Matt Slater. |
| 0:11.0 | Welcome to The Insiders, the new Athletic FC show |
| 0:13.9 | where we're going to dig into the biggest off-pitched stories |
| 0:17.7 | that are going to shape next summer's World Cup. |
| 0:21.9 | Now, I'm in the UK where it is cold but bright. |
| 0:25.7 | And joining me from New York is my pen pal, Adam Crafton, or Crafton, as I'd say, I'm from Essex. |
| 0:32.4 | Adam, before we get stuck in, we should probably explain what we're trying to do here. |
| 0:36.8 | Yeah, well, I guess the World Cup is going to be the biggest show in town in 2026 |
| 0:41.6 | and we want to give people more of an insight into the money, the power, the politics, |
| 0:49.1 | the big figures, the storylines that are going to shape this tournament. |
| 0:52.6 | We'll look at off the field stuff in terms of all the people you would expect, |
| 0:57.6 | whether it's peace prizes or Gianni Infantino or all of those different controversial issues |
| 1:05.4 | that you get around World Cups, ticket prices, the cost of this tournament, |
| 1:09.2 | which we will go into in detail in this tournament. And then also I think we're going to look at some of the big names on the pitch at different times as well, you know, the commercial impact of a Cristiano Ronaldo or Lionel Messi in this tournament, some of the stories around some of the smaller nations, whether that's Haiti or Cape Verde and some of the challenges that their fans are going to encounter during this tournament. |
| 1:28.3 | I'm excited about this. |
| 1:29.2 | There's so many things, I think, that are going to come up. |
| 1:32.4 | I feel like we will have a script prepared about what's talk about and then something like a Peace Prize will come along. |
| 1:39.1 | That means we have to rip it up and start all over again. |
| 1:41.7 | And even just this morning, you know, we're kind of learning details of some of the ticket prices that could be inflicted upon travelling England fans at this |
| 1:50.0 | tournament. So there's loads to talk about and excited to get into it. Well done. That was a |
| 1:55.3 | great sell. So look, for this episode, I suppose we have to start with the most remarkable two hours of television I've seen for a long time. |
... |
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