Has the World Cup broken dynamic pricing?
Business Daily
BBC
4.4 • 816 Ratings
🗓️ 3 June 2026
⏱️ 18 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This week, Michelle, Rahul and Will explore the world of dynamic pricing, where prices go up when demand is high and come down when demand drops. It’s already standard in travel and hospitality. Now, it’s expanding into live events, and this year, it reached the World Cup. Supporters say it’s simple economics, charging what people are willing to pay. Critics argue it risks pricing ordinary fans out of the experiences they love. So how does dynamic pricing really work? Why has it become one of the most controversial trends in live entertainment? And as organisers push to maximise revenue, are we seeing the future of events, or the point where fans push back?
Hosts: Will Bain, Michelle Fleury and Rahul Tandon Producer: Rebecca Smyllie
(Picture: The 2026 FIFA World Cup logo is placed over the original logo of the Hard Rock stadium in Miami, Florida, USA. Credit: CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH/EPA/Shutterstock)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:06.1 | Right, question for the room then. |
| 0:07.7 | Live events. |
| 0:08.9 | What's top of your bucket list? |
| 0:10.3 | Theatre, film, sport, music. |
| 0:13.9 | Anything anybody's queued up for, manically, Michelle? |
| 0:17.3 | Well, I've got to say, Oasis was at the top of my bucket list, |
| 0:20.7 | and I did manage to see them last year at the stadium where the World Cup is playing. |
| 0:25.1 | What about you? You love your concerts. |
| 0:26.9 | Look, for me, and I dream about it all the time, go and see India in a T20 World Cup final. |
| 0:31.5 | Well, I had, Michelle, I had the chance last year. |
| 0:34.4 | Tickets were a little expensive. |
| 0:35.7 | Told my wife, got a look, I thought cricket or divorce, I chose not to get divorced. |
| 0:42.8 | The prices you paid for that, was it a shock? Did you get in at face value? |
| 0:48.0 | I bought it on the secondary market because the initial tickets were too expensive, so I definitely had to wait to the last minute. Now, not just on the secondary market, but on the primary market a lot of the time, it is very much a market, isn't it? Because that's because we're very much in the world of dynamic pricing. So where the price goes up and down in theory about demand. So we're going to get into all of that today. What it is, if you've not heard about it before, how it works, why it's controversial, |
| 1:13.0 | and what impact it's having on the world's biggest sporting event, |
| 1:16.9 | the FIFA World Cup that kicks off in just a week's time with Michelle in the United States. |
| 1:26.1 | Yes, welcome back to Power Blairs from Business Daily here on the World Service. |
| 1:30.6 | I'm Will Bain in the studio in the UK. |
| 1:32.7 | I'm Roaldane and also in the studio, a different one from Willen here in the UK. |
| 1:35.9 | And I'm Michelle Fleury in Sports Mad, New York, where everyone is excited for the Knicks. |
| 1:42.1 | Yes, this has been an issue, Michelle, that's been around for ages. |
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