Good Morning ☀️,

It’s Lucas here, your Chief Predictions Officer at What Are the Odds?

Heading into this year’s World Cup — a tournament where many fans were simply priced out — there were real concerns football was no longer about the fans.

Today, we’re taking a look at how FIFA’s finding out just how true the old “mo’ money mo’ problems” saying is. But more on that soon.

First, here’s what’s ahead.

What’s ahead in today’s edition of What Are the Odds?:

• FIFA’s problems have just begun. 📝

• Today’s complete match schedule. 🗓️

• Our top pick of the weekend. ✅

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Saturday, July 4

🇨🇦 Canada vs. Morocco 🇲🇦

• Stage: Round of 16

• Time: 13:00 ET

• Venue: NRG Stadium, Houston

🇵🇾 Paraguay vs. France 🇫🇷

• Stage: Round of 16

• Time: 17:00 ET

• Venue: Lincoln Financial Field, Philadelphia

Sunday, July 5

🇧🇷 Brazil vs. Norway 🇳🇴

• Stage: Round of 16

• Time: 16:00 ET

• Venue: MetLife Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey

🇲🇽 Mexico vs. England 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿

• Stage: Round of 16

• Time: 20:00 ET

• Venue: Estadio Azteca, Mexico City

Want to get the best odds on these matches?

Mo’ money, mo’ problems. We all know the saying. And, as the 2026 World Cup wears on — a World Cup that was supposed to be most lucrative in history — it’s clear that FIFA’s starting to learn the very meaning of that phrase. Between Stadiums that look half-empty on TV, a four-state legal dogpile, and a resale market now dumping tickets like they're radioactive, things ain’t exactly going according to plan.

Here's the setup.

For the first time ever, FIFA used dynamic pricing for a World Cup. You know, the whole demand-based "the-algorithm-decides-what-you-pay" model that’s made buying concert tickets in America an event in and of itself.

Of course, Gianni Infantino’s defense was simply that FIFA was “adapting to the North American market”. But we all know the real translation was supposed to be: you'll pay what we can get away with. And, predictably, the numbers got kinda silly. The original hosting bid promised a maximum final ticket of around $1,550. By April 2026, the cheapest standard final ticket had blown past that to $5,785, with top seats hitting $10,990 (and then tripling from there). In fact, at one point, tickets for the final appeared on FIFA's own platform at prices exceeding $2 million for a single seat.

For comparison, the priciest final ticket in Qatar 2022 ran about $1,600. And even Donald Trump (Infantino's close pal) saw the $1,000 price tag on nosebleed seats for the US opener and told the New York Post, "I wouldn't pay it either, to be honest with you." So congrats FIFA. When the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize winner thinks you’re gouging, you’ve probably achieved something.

Now, here’s where things go from "expensive" to "interesting." Dynamic pricing is supposed to “reward” the early bird. You know — you make an early commitment before demand peaks, so you get rewarded with a lower price for your loyalty/flexibility/insert another superlative.

Or, at least, that’s the theory.

Unfortunately, FIFA’s version did the exact opposite. According to a subpoena recently filed by the New York and New Jersey attorneys general, the people who bought first — the die-hards who made the commitment early the moment tickets dropped — got the worst deal.

But that’s not all.

In April 2026, after huge numbers of fans had already paid, FIFA quietly introduced a new set of "Front Category" zones carved out of the best seats in each existing tier. Fans who’d already committed their money were shut out of those zones and reassigned to worse locations. Sometimes far from the field or behind the goals, all without being told.

In other words, if you paid for a very specific color-coded seat on a very specific place on a very specific map, months later you were told that the map was (in FIFA's own words) merely "indicative."

Apparently lawyers have a technical term for this which, in a surprising turn of events, is actually daily common English. As several class-action firms now circling it are calling it, this is a classic “bait and switch.”

In any case, that’s all a bunch of allegations and “he said shee said” for now that the courts will have to decide on. However, what’s a little harder to explain away is what’s been captured on camera.

After all, cameras don't lie, and from day one they kept showing the same thing — rows and rows of nobody, even as FIFA announced official attendance figures right near the limit of venue capacities.

Now sure, FIFA did cook up some nice explanations for the ghost sections — those fans were just “standing in the concourses” rather than sitting in their assigned seats (lol).

Of course, this defense got noticeably shakier once the empty patches started to show up again all while reports of 180,000 unsold tickets kept sloshing around.

In any case, there’s at leas a small bit of good news here. Now the tournament’s well and truly into the knockout rounds, the resale market (which had been climbing all through the group stage) suddenly went into free fall. (No surprises here.)

Resale tracker TicketData shows median get-in prices for the remaining games dropped 39% in a single week, with nearly every fixture falling by double digits. And some individual matches pretty much fell off a cliff:

• Germany vs Paraguay fell 68%

• England vs DR Congo fell 69% (nice… sorry, couldn’t help it)

• Switzerland vs Algeria fell 72%.

And even the apparently untouchable July 19 final softened, with the cheapest resale seats sliding from $11,621 to $10,329 in a week after already having tumbled from $12,483.

Now, of course, when we say “plunging” here, it’s a very “relative” term — we’re talking about a fall from a genuinely ridiculous peak. SO, despite what the drops might look like in percentage terms, seats for nearly every upcoming game are still very pricy (and still pricier than a month ago).

There’s also a chance some of the slide is just how knockouts work — fans buy on speculation, guess wrong, and then have to offload with a short turnaround. Visa and border headaches for international fans aren't helping either.

And so, in a way, the scheme is probably working exactly as intended.

FIFA set out to make around $9 billion from this World Cup with a ticketing-and-hospitality target of over $3 billion. That’s a sixfold jump on Qatar, and it’s on track to fly past all of it. And while the empty seats look bad on camera, the revenue’s probably already landed anyway.

So, in reality, the real problem for FIFA here isn’t the money. It’s a bit more subtle than that. To quote one analyst, if the fans who create the atmosphere feel excluded, the product itself gets worse — a World Cup played to empty hospitality boxes and red plastic is a lesser thing over the long run, even if the balance sheet benefits at first.

So where does that leave us?

Well, there’s the Four great attorneys general (New York, New Jersey, California, and Texas) who are looking into what’s now being called one of the broadest consumer-protection actions ever aimed at a World Cup. And, across the Atlantic, Football Supporters Europe and Euroconsumers filed a monopoly-abuse complaint with the European Commission in which they call FIFA’s approach a "monumental betrayal" of the World Cup tradition.

And elsewhere, class-action firms are lining up buyers who fell victim to the old seat-map switcheroo.

And yeah — the resale market is quietly liquidating FIFA's grand pricing experiment in real time which, in combination with the empty seats problem, isn’t a good look.

So sure, FIFA — a registered nonprofit — might still clear something like $13 billion this cycle. But even as they find themselves with mo’ money than ever before, it doesn’t look like that money’s arriving without the corresponding problems.

⚽ Paraguay vs France
🏟️ 2026 FIFA World Cup
📅 Saturday 04 July; 23:00 (Europe/Paris)

• Why we’re watching: This is probably one of the last “easy” games left in this World Cup.

• Top 3 Stats:

  • Paraguay is currently #34 in the FIFA World Rankings, and finished the group stage #3 in its group with 1W/1D/1L, 2 goals scored, and 4 conceded.

  • France is currently #1 in the FIFA World Rankings, and finished the group stage #1 in its group with 3W/0D/0L, 10 goals scored, and 2 conceded.

  • The last time these two met, France won 5-0.

• CXSports says: Let’s not mess around here — France arrive at this match as quite literally the most devastating team in the bracket. They’re one of just three sides (Mexico and Argentina are the other two) to have won all of their group stage matches. And they’re also one of just three teams to have scored 10 goals in the group stage (Netherlands and Germany are the others). And they’re the only side to have achieved both feats. So yeah — they’re pretty much the hottest thing in the World Cup right now.
  
  And let’s not forget they also picked up another two in the round of 32, which has brought the tally up to 12 goals for an average of 3.0 across their matches.
  
  Now, to be fair here, we should probably at least entertain Paraguay’s route to an upset here (after all, if the World Cup can deliver one thing, it’s upsets). And ultimately, if they can pull off an upset, it’s likely going to be the same as it was against Germany. If Gill (who made more saves than any other goalkeeper left in the draw) produces another miracle, and if the block holds into the final half hour, and if Enciso converts one of the rare transitions that make up Paraguay’s 1.1-goals-per-game existence, then this might make it to a shootout. And, in a shootout Paraguay, has now won two of their last two World Cup knockout ties.
  
  But let’s be serious here — did you see the number of conditions that all have to fire perfectly for the shootout to even become a reality? There’s three of ‘em. And each one’s got a pretty low probability of success against the current French team. Multiply those probabilities together, and the chances shrink close enough to none that we might as well just say they’ve got no chance.
  
  So let’s leave it at that — France are simply too good here (and much better than Germany in the exact way that decides this match). So, at best, we might expect Paraguay to frustrate for a little while here if Gill make his saves. But France’s ruthlessness will eventually come to the fore. And it’s at that point where there’ll probably be no coming back.

• Score prediction: 0-2 for France

Bet Option #1

• Bet: France Victory

• Odds Range: 1.13-1.23

Bet Option #2

• Bet: Both Teams to Score (No)

• Odds Range: 1.34-1.50

Make your sportsbook work for you!

That’s a wrap for today. We’ll be back on Monday with plenty more Round of 16 action.

Until then, enjoy the cheap(er) tickets if you’re planning on going… or the schadenfreude if you’re not.