The 2026 World Cup promises a global celebration. Many Arab fans may find themselves locked out.
According to the 2025 DHS AI Use Case Inventory, the Department of Homeland Security already uses a range of AI systems across immigration and enforcement agencies, including tools for forensic phone analysis, cyber-threat detection, and case processing. Immigration officials are also known to use technology to track and monitor individuals crossing the border on temporary visas, even after they enter the US.
The algorithms and visa-triaging systems further muddy this already opaque decision-making space. “Social media monitoring is something that has really been ratcheted up. It’s becoming part of the application process to enter the United States,” Molnar says. “But this has a massive chilling effect for people coming in because you never really know how your social media history might play out once you’re at the border.”
Given the US government’s recent history of targeting what it labels as “antisemitic activity” and pro-Palestinian speech, there are concerns that political expression could factor into immigration scrutiny. This has left visitors attending the World Cup unsure how their online activity might be assessed during visa processing or at the border.
“People are genuinely afraid that they may be detained on the border or picked up by immigration officials,” says Simon Chadwick, professor of sport and geopolitical economy at SKEMA Business School. He says that concerns over entry into the US, combined with the rising ticket prices for fans hoping to attend matches, is creating “this perfect storm and incredibly complex, sensitive, and highly charged tournament,” the likes of which he doesn’t think he has ever seen before in World Cup history.
“I do sense that what a lot of people are doing is they’re conflating issues, and so basically it’s either all FIFA’s fault or it’s all the United States’ fault, and there are some interconnections, but I think for both FIFA and the United States, the event has actually been deeply damaging when it should have been an opportunity to showcase and project soft power,” Chadwick says. “If anything, it’s been detrimental to the political and diplomatic health of both organizations.”
FIFA is projected to generate around $8.9 billion from the 2026 World Cup alone, with television broadcasting rights making up the largest share at roughly 44 percent of total income (about $3.9 billion), while the US expects a multibillion-dollar economic boost driven largely by tourism and hosting infrastructure.
At the same time, FIFA is taking a 15 percent cut on official ticket resales, even as prices have climbed sharply in recent cycles, with premium seats for the 2026 final reaching well over $10,000 compared to the few hundred dollars it cost to see previous World Cup finals. The gap is increasingly being absorbed by fans at the point of purchase.
For the first time this year, FIFA has instituted dynamic, demand-based pricing for World Cup tickets, allowing prices to fluctuate in real time based on market conditions.
According to an Amnesty International report, ticket prices for the 2026 World Cup were set at roughly three times higher than those for the 2022 tournament in Qatar, even before resale markups are taken into account.
“It used to be a football tournament—two teams, two goals, and a ball—and that was it,” Chadwick says of the World Cup. “Now the tournament is much more of an industrial process. It’s not just a moneymaking machine or a geopolitical flashpoint … certainly in those latter stages of the tournament, it’s becoming gentrified.”
That exclusion due to FIFA’s pricing system can be seen playing out across fanbases from all over the world. Adibir Singh, a 29-year-old sports consultant from New Delhi who has followed the World Cup for more than a decade, says he and two friends started planning to attend matches in the US in the summer of 2025. However, each fan was placed on a visa waiting list stretching nearly a year and a half, and their current appointments are still set for October 2026, long after the tournament ends.
