NPR.

This is the indicator from Planet Money.

I'm Waylon Wong.

The men's FIFA World Cup is coming to the U.S. next year.

It's going to be the biggest World Cup ever.

But it's also likely to be the most expensive and the most elusive for your average soccer fan.

Just check out what they're saying on social media.

When people open the presale for official tickets, I was shocked to see the prices.

Just reading into the ticket prices for the World Cup next year, horrible.

Absolutely. This was a shambolic rollout. Has anyone seen the ticket prices they're charging for these games? I'm joined now by another fan. He also happens to be NPR's senior business editor, Raphael NAM. Welcome. Hey, Oylum. Hi, and you are a like super super fan, right? I hear you've been to,

what, six World Cups? I have, six of them. The World Cup has taken me to South Africa, Brazil,

Russia, total five continents. Now, this is not the first time the World Cup has been in the U.S. That was in 1994, but it's much bigger this time.

There's 48 teams spread out across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico.

Yes, I was actually there in 1994. That was my first World Cup game ever.

I was in high school then, and I saw an ad in the newspaper.

So I called the phone number and talked to this very nice lady and got tickets to South Korea versus Bolivia near Boston. It ended up being a

zero-zero-zero game, but honestly, I had such a blast, and getting tickets was so easy.

You must have been so, so excited when you heard the World Cup was coming back to the U.S.

You know something you would have thought, right?

But honestly, my first reaction was a very strongly worded version of, oh, no.

Oh, no. Why? What were you thinking?

As you've heard, right? For the first time in World Cup history, the tickets are extremely expensive and hard to get.

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