What the 2026 World Cup in USA is like for cost and local ‘interest’ as a Newcastle fan following England
· Yahoo Sports
I flew out to the US a couple of weeks ago to watch the two England friendlies and the opening 2026 World Cup group England match.
The editor knows I do a lot of England trips and I have previously written articles about the Euros. I attended both of the last two and watched every England game live (barring the quarter final in 2021 due to Covid restrictions around travel as that game was in Rome). He asked me to do something about this 2026 World Cup tournament, sharing a little about my experience and discussing how you get tickets to tournament games and what the general cost was, as well as giving an insight into the native feeling out here.
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Ironically, I have Mike Ashley to thank for me going to these last three tournaments. I was one of those who left when Rafa did, vowing not to return to St James’ Park until our then owner had left.
My friend, who is a Liverpool fan, rarely got tickets to see his team (sound familiar?) so with both of us unable or unwilling to watch our teams live, we decided to start following England to get our football fix.
We were both single at the time and love travelling so it felt like a good way to be able to watch semi regular live football and get some holidays to places we may not originally have considered.
We were fairly disciplined for the first few years, attending every home game after Russia 2018 and getting to the away ones when we were fortunate enough to get tickets. To explain briefly how it works, the best way to guarantee tournament and away England tickets is to join the England Supporters Travel Club. You pay for a two year membership which costs £85 for new members and £65 for members renewing. Junior memberships come in at £35 for new and £20 for renewing. You can only get tickets for away games by being a travel club member unless you buy in the other country’s end.
You earn 2 ‘caps’ per fixture attended regardless of whether it’s home or away. You get 1 cap when you renew your membership. The tickets have to be scanned, or you don’t get the caps. For home games you can get a ticket emailed or posted. For away games you have to pick them up at a location in the host country (usually a hotel foyer) over a period of typically two days before the game. You must provide identification to collect your ticket and can’t pick up on behalf of someone else.
The caps last for two cycles of membership, so four years. Once you hit that four year mark, the oldest two years’ caps drop off, and you just have the caps for the last cycle and then accumulate new ones from the most recent cycle. This could be a way that Newcastle United revamp the season ticket holder loyalty system so that younger fans can elevate their position and get a chance at attaining the popular away days that are currently pretty much a closed shop, with fans that have been going for 30+ years having an insurmountable level of loyalty points even if they rarely attend away games anymore.
Away days with England are tough to get tickets for if you’re not a ‘top capper’. Sure, if they’re playing in a huge stadium, you’re usually guaranteed to get i, but when we play the likes of San Marino in their 4,798 seater, only people at the very top of the cap table are going to be guaranteed a ticket. For this reason, 70% of tickets are sold based on caps and the other 30% are balloted to give others a chance. A good example would be Athens a couple of years ago. My friend had just signed up to the travel club and had attended one home game and had 2 caps. I had 34 but when it came to the ballot, he secured a ticket and I didn’t. I’ve only ever been successful in one England ballot in the last eight years (again, sound familiar?).
Anyway, moving on from the formalities. My friend and I have managed to notch up a few away days. Seville, Porto, Prague, Munich and Milan have all been visited but the dream of hitting places we’d never considered going to such as Tirana, Skopje and Serravalle hasn’t materialised.
My friend has married and had two kids since we started our campaign to watch regular high level (debatable) football, and he opted against coming out to this World Cup. He only came to the final of the last Euros too, but he does still make it to home games to keep his cap totals up. We haven’t done an away game since Milan in September 2022.
So, I flew to Tampa alone on the 5th of June. I caught the first friendly against New Zealand.
It was a strange experience. Firstly, few English had travelled. With the astronomical cost of the World Cup this year (I’ll get onto specifics later) many were saving their powder for the tournament itself or gambling on attending from the latter stages onwards. I have one friend who is optimistically travelling over for the semis and final. As Travel Club members, you pay upfront for every game you wish to attend and then you’ll be reimbursed for any games that England don’t make it to. It’s called Follow My Team, which is the best way of doing it as if you buy a semi final ticket from FIFA and then England end up on the other side of the knockouts to what you expected, you’ll end up watching two other teams even if England did reach the last four.
This is the other way to attend tournaments. If you don’t go through the Travel Club, you can enter the FIFA/UEFA ballots or look to buy at the inflated resale prices.
It was extremely odd seeing thousands of Americans in knock off England tops during the game in Tampa. Even weirder hearing some of them attempting our chants. ‘Come on England’ in an American accent just doesn’t sound right. There were loadss of other national shirts too, including a smattering of Argentina and Germany ones. Do your history lads.
There was also an abundance of club shirts. Plenty of Real Madrid and Barcelona as well as lots of English teams. I saw a couple of Newcastle shirts out there and was sat reasonably close to a young girl in a Mackem shirt during the second half.
It was a blisteringly hot day and the best thing about the stadium was the drinking in the stands. In fact, the main concourse area at the Raymond James Stadium was outside (and by this I mean inside the actual stadium with the pitch in sight) so you could nip from your seat and grab another beer without missing any of the action. Not that there was much to miss during this particular game.
My other favourite part of this experience was the fact that the game was nowhere near sold out (there were a reported 25,889 spectators in the 69,000 seater stadium) and it was all open with every area easily reached simply by walking around the perimeter of that outside concourse. In the first half, I sat on one side of the stadium in England’s attacking half. Then for the second half I grabbed another beer and simply migrated to the opposite stand.
Despite the match not being all that entertaining, I enjoyed the experience. With it only being a 40 minute walk to my hotel, the travel was easy enough too.
Many England fans I spoke to were staying in Orlando for the next few days and taking in the parks whilst they waited for the second friendly hosted there. I hopped on a train down to Miami instead. I wanted to check out the beaches and, as a big Muhammad Ali fan, I’d decided to visit the 5th Street Gym (he opened the new version of it as the one he famously trained in was knocked down in 1993) and the Convention Centre where he won his first title against Sonny Liston. I then trained it up to Orlando on the day of our match against Costa Rica.
The first thing to discuss is the general American nonchalance to the event. Many of the people I spoke to, other than those attending the friendlies, were unaware that there was even a World Cup on, not to mention it being part hosted by their country. The basketball play-offs took precedence in the minds of many that I chatted to.
Across my entire stay, I was asked three times if I was in the England team. I’m a short, slightly overweight 38 year old that likes a drink. It’s not the 80s!
In Orlando the stadium was a lot fuller but that down to it being a lot smaller. Reportedly 20,341 attended but the capacity was only 25,500 at the Inter&Co Stadium. The game was slightly better, and the vibes were similar to the previous match.
The day after that match, I flew to Louisville which is where Muhammad Ali grew up. Had my friend come, I’m sure we’d have stayed longer in Florida, flown to Dallas earlier or gone somewhere else altogether. The positive of being on my own was that I could create my own itinerary, so it was off to Kentucky and six days of me exploring the city that produced my greatest idol.
Billy Miller Muhammad Ali Center DallasPhoto By Billy Miller via The Mag
For the first US game, I joined a watch party at a place called 4th Street Live in Downtown Louisville. They’d put up a huge outdoor screen, and I was pleased to see there was a decent turnout. Maybe not the number that we’d get for a big event in England, but it was nice to see a large crowd of people were aware this incredibly costly and highly publicised event was happening. The Americans, not known for their inventive chants, only produced one which predictably was ‘USA, USA, USA.’ I enjoyed hearing the collective boo when Infantino was shown on the screen, evidencing that some of our friends across the Atlantic are just as aware of what a shameless money grabber that bloke is.
That match was a good one to watch but the big screen was only going to be showing games for the US, Canada and Mexico so when Bruno turned out for Brazil, I was relegated to one of the smaller screens inside the sports bar at the same venue.
I won’t bore you with my trip to Louisville but, besides when I watched the match, I struggled to find anyone else out there that was aware of the tournament, and it was there that two of the three people asked if I was part of the squad.
The day before our first group game, I flew to Dallas. By this point I was exhausted. I’d been to a DIY show the night before. This is what they call small, local music events, it wasn’t about plastering or putting up fences. I’d been averaging over 30k steps a day so was ready to relax. There were plenty of English about now, but I just checked into my apartment and chilled out for the evening.
On game day I went down to Dealey Plaza to see the museum at the former Book Depository where Lee Harvey Oswald famously assassinated JFK. Majority of the others queuing donned England shirts. A macabre shared activity before we descended on the stadium for what could also be a morbid experience.
Having spent a fortune over the two weeks, I decided to opt for the Uber Share option to get to the AT&T Stadium in Arlington. It was located just over 20 miles from where I was staying so I had no intention of walking. Every mode of transport had been priced up due to the football, and I managed to save $17 by going for the shared option. I’d never done it before. When the ride arrived, there was one other guy in the car. He was sat in the back, and I got in the front to ensure I had a good amount of space should the car fill up. He was of Mexican heritage but living out of Chicago and had managed to secure a ticket for $984 on a resale site. He was donning a Beatles shirt and supporting England. He asked me immediately if I thought it was coming home. One thing I found whenever I did chat to someone who was interested in the World Cup is that many of them were supporting England either solely or as well as the US. Everyone with knowledge of football that I met in those first 10 days were Liverpool fans, bar one Crystal Palace supporter. My Mexican friend was an Arsenal fan though.
A few miles into our journey we picked up another passenger. He was also an Arsenal fan and a proper Anglophile. He used the word ‘mate’ regularly and said things like ‘quid’ and ‘to be fair’ despite being a lifelong Boston resident. He told me he had lots of English friends and had been to London a few times which is where he’d picked up the mannerisms. He was money savvy and had booked the cab to within a mile of the stadium as it had halved the price. He intended to walk from there but, when he got out, I asked the driver if she could just take him the rest of the way as we weren’t full and were all going there anyway. She was fine with that, so I called him back through the window and he ran over with a face so full of joy, you’d think he’d won the lottery or his team had just won the Premier League… He didn’t have a ticket, but the second part of his savviness was that his intention was to go to the stadium and wait on the resale sites. He said he’d been monitoring them for other games, and he found that after kick off, the prices plummeted. They were ranging from $1,200 to well over $2k on the day of the game but, once that whistle blew, sellers lost their nerve and they were going down to $300/$400 dollars. I wish I’d taken contact details for him as I don’t know whether he ended up getting a ticket cheap enough for him to justify buying it. He told me his limit was $600. It’s a good idea for anyone wanting to attend a costly event in the future though. If you’re on a budget and in the area anyway, you might as well take the gamble.
The AT&T Stadium is the home of the Dallas Cowboys, and I have to say it’s the finest venue I’ve ever attended. It’s gargantuan in size, with a capacity of up to 105,000 for special events although it’s typically 80,000. Apparently, there are moveable sections for expandable seating. Something to get the Newcastle Untied architects on? It was just over 70k for this game.
The concourse spaces were clean, sparkling and immense and I didn’t queue long for beers at any stage as there were so many different bars and stalls. You could buy multiple food and snack options. The security was appalling though. I unwittingly ended up in the corporate section when trying to get back to my seat in the second half. Nobody checked that I should be there and I actually sat in an empty corporate seat but was told by the lady next to me that it was taken so made my way back to my actual seat.
I’m sure many of you saw the match and it was certainly one of the better games from recent tournaments. Where I was sat was mainly English (including an irritating Mackem behind me who spent as much time talking about Newcastle as he did the match itself) but I’d say the vast majority of spectators were American or Mexican. Even some of the ones in Croatia shirts had American accents.
England v Croatia World Cup 2026 DallasPhoto By Billy Miller via The Mag
For many England fans the prices have been prohibitive and here I’ll get onto the scandalous cost to Joe Public of this tournament.
Everything was priced up. The cost of a can of beer was $16. As I mentioned, all the transport prices had been raised. I don’t know how much the trains and buses cost, but when I left the stadium, my plan was to walk for a bit, find somewhere to eat and then get an Uber after everything had settled. There would have been cheaper options, but I find things like the shuttle buses take forever to get onto and are cramped and sweaty even in cooler climates. In the searing heat of Dallas, I thought it’d be unbearable, so I much preferred a sunny walk and a meal before getting a taxi to myself for the 20 mile trek back to Downtown. I did a test as a I left the stadium, I’d already walked a good ten minutes or so by this point and when I looked at the cost of an Uber it started at $102! The traffic was unsurprisingly manic at this point so I have no idea who would be opting for this method of transport. I walked about a mile, found a Red Crab restaurant, where I sat and had dinner before getting my Uber for $35.
The price of my ticket was £200. The friendlies were a lot cheaper. I think they were £25 and £28 from memory. However, as the tournament progresses, the prices naturally increase. I was in the cheapest bracket for every ticket for the tournament, disregarding the handful of $60 tickets Fifa made available for top cappers. The thing about these tickets was only enough were released to service around half the top cappers. So, based on a ballot, someone who had been to every single England game for the last four years may have been able to purchase a ticket for every game at $60 each, whilst someone else in the exact same situation would have had to pay the prices I was entitled to in Category 3.
Now the first thing to bear in mind is that I went to every game at the last Euros. It cost me £1,000 in all, with the ticket for the final priced at £300. Again, I was in the cheapest category.
Here is the table we were sent by the England Travel Supporter’s Club when ticket prices were announced. This is before the token gesture of a few hundred $60 tickets was released.
FIFA World Cup 2026™ Ticket Prices by category for England Supporters Travel Club (ESTC) Members
All prices in USD. **Conditional on England progress. Best viewed in landscape mode on mobile.*
If England were to make the final, and you bought a ticket for every game in Category 3, you’d be shelling out $7,020 which, at today’s exchange rate, converts to approximately £5,240. And remember, you have to buy all these upfront months ago. At the Euros, there was less pressure as you bought tickets as the tournament progressed. If you couldn’t afford the final, you weren’t obligated to buy the ticket. This time all the money had to be sent upfront. If England get knocked out in the quarter finals, you would get the semi final and final ticket money back. But guess what? If the exchange rate deteriorates, you’d be getting less money back than that which you committed months prior. Money that could have been sitting in your own bank accruing interest.
It’s scandalous, especially when you consider the cost of attending all the games to get yourself in a position to qualify for these cheaper tickets. Had I barely gone to any games prior to the tournament and bit the bullet on the Category 1 tickets, I’d be set back $16,590, which is roughly £12,390. You then have the small matter of funding travel, accommodation, food throughout a five week tournament on top of all that.
I was lucky at the Euros as my uncle and auntie live in Germany. They put me up for four weeks and the travel was a lot cheaper. All our games happened to be on their side of Germany so the furthest I travelled was about three hours.
There will be fans with links in North America which will allow them to mitigate some of the cost but the vast majority of them will have an enormous tab to pick up.
All in, the cost of me doing what I have done will be a little under £5k. Not an amount to be sniffed at but considering that has encompassed three games, five flights, a lot of hotels/apartments and plenty of meals and entertainment, it’s not an absurd figure. That amount would no doubt have quadrupled had I opted to stay for the entire event. I may love football but I’m less fond of bankruptcy.
It’s been a tremendous experience. I think I’ll probably hang up my passport after the next Euros so this may have been my only chance to visit a World Cup. I’m glad I’ve done it but the greed of Fifa and so many within football truly knows no limits. I can only see it getting worse.
You can follow the author on Twitter @billymerlin