Expanded 2026 World Cup sets new attendance and viewership records

PARIS: The expanded 2026 FIFA World Cup has set new attendance benchmarks, while television audiences also surpassed previous tournament records, FIFA president Gianni Infantino said as the competition drew to a close.

Speaking on Friday, Infantino said the larger 48-team format had contributed significantly to the figures, noting that the tournament included 16 more teams than before. He also said the event had gone beyond expectations despite the scale of the expansion.

Before Saturday’s third-place play-off and Sunday’s final, FIFA had officially recorded more than 6.6 million spectators at stadiums across the United States, Canada and Mexico. After Spain defeated Argentina in the final to win the title, media calculations put total attendance for the 104-match tournament at 6.81 million, although FIFA had not yet issued a final official number.

The previous World Cup attendance record was 3,587,538, set in the United States in 1994. FIFA said stadiums in 2026 were filled to 99.7 per cent of capacity on average, even as concerns persisted over high ticket prices. Average attendance was reported at 65,351 per match. The five-million mark was passed during the round-of-32 meeting between France and Sweden.

FIFA also said television numbers had broken earlier records in host countries and worldwide. At a press conference on Friday, US President Donald Trump cited a figure of nearly six billion viewers. FIFA has not yet released a detailed audience breakdown, but Infantino said previous records had been exceeded by a very wide margin. The 2022 World Cup final in Qatar, when Argentina beat France, had been the most-watched match in the tournament’s history with 1.5 billion viewers, surpassing the 1.12 billion recorded for the 2018 final.

In comments released by FIFA, Infantino said the audience milestones were far beyond earlier levels.

Before the tournament, FIFA had forecast record revenue of more than seven billion euros, or eight billion dollars, for 2026. That would mark a 56 per cent rise compared with 2022 in Qatar. Ahead of the event, television rights revenue was projected to increase by 34 per cent to nearly four billion dollars, while sponsorship income was expected to grow by 21 per cent.

FIFA also said the tournament had generated major digital and social media engagement. It estimated that by the end of the round of 16, 5.2 billion people, described as nearly two-thirds of the world’s population, had interacted with the competition at least once.

Of the 3.7 billion dollars FIFA planned to spend on the World Cup, one quarter was set aside for participating national teams and clubs releasing international players. In late April, the overall prize fund was increased by 15 per cent to 871 million dollars, up from 440 million dollars at the 2022 tournament in Qatar. The champions were due to receive 50 million dollars, while every participating side was guaranteed at least 12.5 million dollars.

There was no assurance that those minimum payments would fully cover the higher costs faced by teams, particularly because of the tournament’s broad geographical spread across three host countries.

At the start of the tournament in June, Infantino told Brazilian television that FIFA had discussed expanding the 2030 World Cup to 64 teams for the competition’s centenary edition. He said the proposal had been submitted to the FIFA Council. The 2030 tournament is scheduled to be staged in Spain, Portugal and Morocco, with additional matches in Paraguay, Uruguay and Argentina.