“CHILL, RELAX,” Says Infantino - As Long as the Cash Keeps Flowing

On the eve of kickoff, the FIFA president defends tickets priced up to 73,200 dollars, calls the tournament the greatest event in human history, and thanks Donald Trump while leaving a chair empty for an imprisoned journalist!

Mexico City - On the eve of the opening match, ahead of a tournament featuring forty eight teams and one hundred four games, Gianni Infantino appeared before journalists, which is rare enough, and offered the world some advice. Everyone should stay calm and relax. He said it about a referee the United States would not allow into the country, but it sounded as if it applied to everything, to the prices and the war, and also to the empty chairs that still need to be discussed.

First the prices, because nothing reveals the man more clearly. Tickets begin at 140 dollars for the group stage, but a standard seat for the final on July 19 outside New York was listed at up to 8,680 dollars, while a hospitality seat reached up to 73,200. FIFA later raised the listed final ticket price first to 10,990 dollars and then to 32,970. Four years ago in Qatar, prices ranged from 69 to 1,607 dollars. Only after substantial criticism did the federation offer national associations tickets at 60 dollars for loyal supporters, one hundred thirty thousand in total, a gesture handed out by an organization demanding five figure sums in the same breath. The justification is framed as concern for other people’s money. If tickets were sold more cheaply, Infantino said, they would move entirely legally in this country onto the secondary market at much, much higher prices, and where would that money go then? To those running resale and black market operations and not to football. It is an argument worth admiring. To prevent profiteers from making money off the game, FIFA prefers to charge the profiteering prices itself.

The average price, he insisted, remains below 500 dollars across the entire tournament and is comparable to other American sports championships, which may be true for resale prices but not for official listings. Average tickets for recent baseball championship series ranged from about 350 to 400 dollars, while American football averaged 230 dollars in the first round last season, 320 in the second, 450 for conference championships, and around 3,300 for the Super Bowl. Infantino also appeared unconcerned by investigations launched by attorneys general in California, New Jersey, New York, and Texas. We are very relaxed, he said. Before selling six and a half to seven million tickets, the project is reviewed with the best lawyers and the best experts, and if FIFA is doing something wrong, then probably everyone selling tickets in North America is doing something wrong too. Any investigation is welcome, and they are happy to disclose everything.

Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo: „Im Nationalpalast habe ich den Präsidenten der FIFA, Gianni Infantino, sowie Vertreter von Verbänden und Konföderationen empfangen, um sie in diesem großartigen Land auf das Herzlichste willkommen zu heißen. Wir stehen am Vorabend der Eröffnung der FIFA-Fußballweltmeisterschaft 2026 in Mexiko.“

Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo: “At the National Palace, I welcomed FIFA President Gianni Infantino as well as representatives of federations and confederations to this great country with the warmest possible reception. We stand on the eve of the opening of the 2026 FIFA World Cup in Mexico.”

Then the referee. It was unfortunate, Infantino said, that Somali official Omar Artan had been denied entry, the first Somali ever selected to officiate at a World Cup and turned away in Miami on Saturday by border authorities citing unspecified screening concerns. We do not control everything, he said, we try, we talk, we see, and sometimes it is better to stay relaxed because shouting and screaming often makes finding solutions harder. We are not kings of the world ruling over governments and police forces. The world is aggressive, security comes first, decisions must be respected, and work continues quietly in the background. This is a man who can move governments to bring entire tournaments into their countries, yet when it comes to one referee, speaks of his own powerlessness as if it were a law of nature.

He was proud of other things. Bringing Iran to play in America was already a success, he said, and he did not know who else could have achieved that. We do not live on the moon but on Earth, and we must deal with situations as they are. The fact that the Iranian team moved its training camp from the United States to Mexico and will only fly in shortly before matches, into the country bombing its homeland, did not diminish his pride. The tournament, he added, would probably become the greatest event in human history.

Infantino claims FIFA cannot prevent the exclusion of referees, players, journalists, or fans because host governments make those decisions. Yet when Indonesia denied visas to Israel’s U23 national team in 2023, FIFA immediately moved the tournament to Argentina.

And none of it, he said, would have been possible without one man, without Donald Trump. Without his commitment and involvement, Infantino declared, hosting a World Cup in the United States would simply have been impossible, that is just the way it is, and Trump immediately understood the scale and force of the tournament. It is the same man whose authorities turned away the Somali referee at the border and whose war hangs over the entire event, and to whom the president of world football now offers his gratitude.

Generosity belongs to the performance. FIFA expects eleven billion dollars from the tournament, but there could have been much more. Everything could have been placed behind a paywall, Infantino said, and then perhaps thirty billion dollars would come in, only then billions of people would not be able to watch the tournament. One must appreciate the modesty of an organization selling a seat for 73,200 dollars and congratulating itself for not charging even more.

Compared with Qatar, the appearance was almost peaceful. Four years ago, at the same stage, Infantino attacked critics and lectured Europeans who criticized Qatar’s human rights record, in a strange appearance in which he declared that he felt gay, he felt like a woman, and also like a migrant worker, among other unusual remarks. At fifty six, he has led FIFA since 2016 and intends to seek another term next year that would extend through 2031.

But one thing could not be explained away because it remained silent. During the press conference, Infantino left one chair empty, for Christophe Gleizes, a French freelance journalist whom Algeria sentenced last year to seven years in prison over a conversation with a football official accused of links to a banned independence movement. The empty chair was the most honest gesture of the evening and also the one that revealed the most. The imprisoned journalist receives a place at the table, while the rejected referee receives advice not to shout.

Stay relaxed, that is the confession of a power that has become comfortable. Those who set the prices can afford calm, and those who own the tournament call it the greatest in human history. Those who handed a Peace Prize to a president now insist they are not kings over governments. The calm Infantino recommends to everyone else is the calm of someone who has already won before the first match begins. The referee sits at home, the journalist sits in prison. The seat in the stadium costs half a year’s salary, and above it all floats the friendly request not to get so upset. Perhaps that is the real message of this tournament: in the end, neither the ball nor justice rules, but the composure of those who make others pay.