Matias Celestino recites by heart, in order, all 18 qualifying games that the Argentina men’s football team played towards this year’s World Cup. He was present in all of them, nine at home and nine away, crossing the continent with his drum to support his nation, the current world champions.
Now, Celestino, 43 years old, is preparing for the culmination of this marathon: taking his drum, but also his wife and son, to Argentina’s World Cup games in the United States.
It’s the worst time to be a passionate Argentina fan.
Argentine fans, for whom football can be an obsession, have always flocked to World Cups in their thousands, providing a visual and aural backdrop to recent tournaments in Brazil, Russia and Qatar. Now they are faced with the highest-ever ticket prices for this year’s World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
For the first time in the tournament’s nearly 100-year history, FIFA, football’s governing body, adopted dynamic pricing, a model common in North America for airline tickets, concerts and sports tickets. Costs for fans of the most popular teams have soared to staggering levels, from starting prices that were already several times higher than in Qatar four years ago.
“It’s as if they are trying to do business with our passion,” Soledad Aldao, a 35-year-old Argentine fan, said on a recent Sunday during a fan-organized barbecue in a Buenos Aires park.
Amid the smoke and the aroma of meat, around 150 fans wearing national team clothing gathered for a barbecue, shared tips for saving money and looked for travel companions and roommates for their trips to the United States. They also lamented ticket prices, which have drawn criticism and scrutiny from fans and politicians, and even prompted legal complaints.
Aldao, a software developer, spent US$700 (R$3,400) on each of two group stage tickets to see Argentina play Jordan and Algeria — more than triple what they would have cost four years ago and more than the average monthly salary in Argentina. Since then, prices have increased even further, with individual tickets exceeding US$800 (R$3,900). This is double the price of equivalent tickets for games involving the other teams in Argentina’s group: Algeria, Jordan and Austria.
And these are just the official prices. On a resale site where FIFA, a non-profit organization, takes 30%, prices rise even higher. A ticket for sale for the World Cup final on July 19 made headlines after its owner asked for more than US$2 million (R$9.8 million). FIFA’s own prices for the final have already skyrocketed to more than US$10,000 (R$49,000), around 10 times more than in 2022.
In previous World Cups, fans paid the same fixed prices for equivalent games. FIFA says it needs the revenue to fund the development of football around the world.
Argentines are competing for tickets not only with each other, but also with fans who want to see one of the greatest players in history, Lionel Messi, in what will almost certainly be his last World Cup.
Aldao was among approximately five million Argentines who filled the streets of Buenos Aires when their team, led by Messi, beat France four years ago to claim what is widely considered the best final in the tournament’s history. She decided then that she needed to go next time, no matter what. She is considering selling her car to finance more tickets. “It’s crazy, but it’s a dream for me and it’s something in our culture,” he said.
The attraction of being at a World Cup for Argentines is visible every four years, when stadiums and cities are taken over by fans dressed in blue and white from the South American nation.
“The World Cup is the only movement that can unite a country as divided as ours,” said Celestino.
For many Argentines, financing travel to the tournament has rarely been simple. Argentina’s volatile economy, with low wages and soaring inflation, often forces people to work two or even three jobs to survive. The average monthly income of registered workers is around US$1,200 (R$5,900), and almost half of the workforce works informally, often earning less.
But experts say it is precisely because of Argentina’s history of political and economic instability that football serves as a fundamental pillar of national pride.
“We are a poor country, we are a failed country, but we are the best fans,” said Pablo Alabarces, sociologist and author of several books on football.
Some fans start saving at the end of one World Cup for the next, while others commit resources they don’t have.
Even with precarious finances, Celestino said that his wife, Micaela, plans to quit her teaching job to go to the World Cup. The couple took on several thousand dollars of debt to finance a month-long stay in the United States.
Celestino said he has already maxed out several credit cards, held a raffle and asked friends and neighbors for help. But like many others, he is waiting to buy tickets, hoping prices will drop closer to the games. Argentina plays twice in Dallas and once in Kansas City, Missouri. “I’m waiting for a kind soul to come along and help me,” he said.
Over the years, fans like Alejandro Solnicki have developed money-saving tricks. Instead of purchasing a direct flight to the United States, Solnicki, 41, a casino worker, will take a five-day odyssey through São Paulo, Aruba and Charlotte, North Carolina, before arriving in Missouri for the first game. Still, he paid US$750 (R$3,700) per ticket for each of Argentina’s three games. “We spend whatever it takes because we are fanatics; we don’t use rationality,” he said.
Comfort is not part of the calculation. Solnicki said that at a recent qualifying game in Colombia, he shared a hotel room with one bed with ten other people. “We all slept sitting up,” he said.
Some World Cup regulars decided to give up — both in protest and out of necessity. Rodrigo Diez, 36, a customs officer, said he had been to three previous World Cups, where he paid US$50 (in Brazil), US$70 (in Russia) and US$70 (in Qatar), and was not willing to pay prices that “don’t make sense.”
“Going there would be like playing their game, so that in the next World Cup they do the same thing again,” he said, and added: “It makes me angry that they take something that should be for everyone and turn it into something that is only for a few.”
