Paraguay’s shootout victory over four-time champions Germany yesterday was the upset of the 2026 World Cup so far – and in a competitive field, too.
Paraguay, who were humbled by the United States on opening night, put in a backs-to-the-wall defensive performance against Julien Nagelsmann’s side in Boston.
It paid dividends. Jose Canale dispatched the winning penalty to complete a historic victory after the two sides could not be separated after 120 minutes.
Just short of 64,000 fans were in attendance, many of them Paraguayans shedding tears of ecstasy after the final whistle.
That’s just as well, as many of them had paid thousands of dollars to access the stadium. Before kick-off, the cheapest get-in price was $444, per data collected via Ticket Data.
But even that sum was relatively modest compared to other ticket prices at this summer’s World Cup, which is comfortably the most nakedly commercial in the tournament’s near century-old history.
Dynamic pricing, sanctioned and unsanctioned touts and simple profiteering have made attending a match in the United States and, to a lesser extent, Canada and Mexico unfeasible for many bedrock fans.
There was a neat example of FIFA’s ticketing ecosystem in what happened to the prices for match 89 of this summer’s World Cup almost immediately after Gustavo Alfaro booked their place in the last-16.
Many had assumed that match 89, which will take place at Lincoln Financial Field, would be contested between France, who face Sweden later today, and Germany.
But Paraguay put paid to that notion. As a result, the get-in price for the occasion has nosedived, from a high of $3,194 to $965 at the time of writing.
For the scalpers – and for FIFA’s official resale platform, which takes a cut of every ticket sold by brokers – that will cost them millions of dollars.
That said, FIFA is projecting ticketing and hospitality revenues of $3bn throughout the tournament.
Given that they have already broken the attendance record for a single World Cup, they are likely to exceed that target regardless of how many upsets there are between now and 19 July.
