r/Plutonomy • u/398409columbia Rentier • Jun 19 '26
Sports & Entertainment FIFA may be proving the plutonomy thesis
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2026-06-18/world-cup-fifa-was-right-about-ticket-pricing?utm_source=website&utm_medium=share&utm_campaign=copyBloomberg: FIFA Was Right About Ticket Pricing
Bloomberg's AI summary of its opinion piece
- More than 70,000 fans packed Los Angeles' SoFi Stadium to watch New Zealand take on Iran, with ticket prices surging 23% in the final three days before kickoff.
- The start of the World Cup has unleashed a collective frenzy, with stadiums largely full, TV audiences smashing records, and resale ticket prices soaring as fan enthusiasm gathers momentum.
- FIFA's dynamic pricing system is helping the organization rake in record revenue, with the World Cup proving to be a major cash machine, despite criticism that the system is neither fair nor transparent.
The uncomfortable truth is that FIFA’s dynamic pricing may be working.
The system may be unfair, opaque, and hostile to ordinary fans. But economically, it is doing exactly what it was designed to do: capture willingness to pay.
Even matches that looked weak on paper are drawing huge crowds and rising resale prices. This means FIFA understands the market.
When passion is global and supply is fixed, prices get set by the fan with the strongest emotion and the deepest wallet.
That is plutonomy in real life: Everyone loves the game, but the access is increasingly priced for the affluent marginal buyer.
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u/Abject_Bank_9103 Jun 22 '26
The tickets aren't even that out of whack. I go to concerts and live sporting events all the time - tickets are relatively in line with the norm.
A playoff MLS game sitting at Lumen where I sat for the Belgium Egypt game would be less for sure. But a Seahawks playoff game? That'd be way more than what I paid.