REACTING TO
Scotland and England Fans Face a Train Fare Hike to Boston and I Ran the Numbers on How Much FIFA Cares About 'Fan Experience'
by Sarah Boffin

Sarah Boffin wrote that FIFA's idea of "fan experience" basically requires you to own a helicopter. She ran the numbers on train fares from New York to Boston for the World Cup and came back with figures that would make your eyes water. $184 for a standard train ticket during the match window. I read that and thought surely not. Surely even FIFA and their American mates haven't let it get that bad.

So I did what any self-respecting grumpy old man does when a younger colleague publishes something alarming. I checked. And I hate to say it but Sarah's right. In fact she might be being generous.

Let me give you some context because context is everything and nobody at FIFA has ever heard of it. The average Scotland fan earns about £35,000 a year. That's roughly £2,900 a month. A return train ticket from New York to Boston at these inflated prices is going to run you close to $370. Convert that to pounds and you're looking at about £290. That is ten percent of a monthly wage. On a train. To watch football in a baseball stadium. In a city that thinks a "nil nil" is something you buy at Boots.

Now I've been to World Cups. Proper ones. In 1998 you could get a train from Paris to Lyon for about forty quid return and the French rail network didn't try to rob you blind just because Ronaldo was playing that week. In 2006 the Germans ran special fan trains between host cities. Subsidised. Efficient. On time. Because the Germans understood that a World Cup is supposed to be a festival, not a financial punishment.

What have FIFA done for 2026? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. They awarded the tournament to three countries spread across an entire continent and then just sort of wandered off. No dedicated fan transport. No fare caps. No coordination with Amtrak or anyone else. Gianni Infantino stood on a stage and said "fans at the heart of everything" and then left those fans to navigate a rail system that charges dynamic pricing like it's selling concert tickets for Beyoncé.

Here's another number for you. FIFA's projected revenue from the 2026 World Cup is $11 billion. Eleven. Billion. Dollars. They could subsidise every single fan train ticket between host cities and it would cost them roughly 0.3% of that revenue. I did the maths on the back of a betting slip. It's not complicated.

But they won't do it. Because FIFA doesn't care about the bloke from Dundee who saved up for two years and took his lad to see Scotland play England. They care about the corporate hospitality packages. They care about the VIP lounges. They care about sponsors who arrive in black cars and have never stood in a queue in their lives.

Before VAR and before FIFA turned into a global corporation with the moral compass of a broken weathervane, World Cups were for working people. You saved up. You went. You could afford to get around. Now they want you to remortgage your house to catch a train to a ground that doesn't even have proper goal nets because last Tuesday it was hosting the Red Sox.

Sarah's numbers are spot on. The fan experience is a con. Always has been with this lot. The only experience FIFA cares about is the one happening in their bank account.