Matias Celestino rattles off in order all 18 qualification games the Argentina men’s national soccer team played en route to this year’s World Cup. He attended all of them, nine at home and nine away, traversing the continent with his drum to cheer on his nation, the defending world champions.
Now, Mr. Celestino, 43, is preparing for the crowning moment of that marathon effort: taking his drum, but also his wife and son, to Argentina’s World Cup matches in the United States this summer.
It’s the worst time to be a passionate Argentina fan.
Argentine supporters, for whom soccer can be an obsession, have always flocked to World Cups by the tens of thousands, providing a visual and sonic backdrop at recent tournaments in Brazil, Russia and Qatar. Now they find themselves facing the highest ever ticket prices for this summer’s World Cup in the United States, Mexico and Canada.
For the first time in the tournament’s nearly 100-year history, FIFA, soccer’s governing body, has adopted dynamic pricing, a model common in North America for airline, concert and sports tickets. Costs for fans of the most popular teams have spiked to staggering levels from starting prices that were already multiple times higher than they were in Qatar four years ago.
“It’s like they are trying to make some business with our passion,” Soledad Aldao, a 35-year-old Argentina supporter, said on a recent Sunday at a barbecue organized by fans at a park in Buenos Aires.
Amid the smoke and scent of steaks, about 150 fans wearing national team gear gathered for a barbecue and shared cost-saving tips and sought travel companions and roommates for their trips to the United States. They also commiserated about ticket prices, which have drawn scorn and scrutiny from fans and politicians, and even prompted legal complaints.
Ms. Aldao, a software developer, spent $700 each on two group-stage tickets to see Argentina play Jordan and Algeria — more than triple what they would have cost four years ago and more than the average monthly salary in Argentina. Since then, prices have increased further, with individual tickets now topping $800. That is double the price of equivalent tickets for games featuring the other teams in Argentina’s group: Algeria, Jordan and Austria.
And those are just the official prices. On a resale site from which FIFA, a nonprofit, takes a 30 percent cut, the prices soar further. A ticket on offer for the World Cup final on July 19 made headlines after its owner asked for more than $2 million. FIFA’s own asking prices for the final have already shot up to more than $10,000, about 10 times higher than they were in 2022.
At previous World Cups, fans paid the same, fixed prices for equivalent games. FIFA says it needs the income to fund soccer development around the world.
Argentines are competing for tickets not only with each other but also with fans who want to see one of the game’s greatest players, Lionel Messi, at what will almost certainly be his last World Cup.
Ms. Aldao was among the approximately five million Argentines who swamped the streets of Buenos Aires when their national team, led by Mr. Messi, beat France four years ago to win what is widely regarded as the best final in the tournament’s history. She decided then that she had to go next time, whatever the cost. She is considering selling her car to fund more tickets. “It’s crazy, but it’s a dream for me and it’s something in our culture,” she said.
The pull of being at a World Cup for Argentines is visible every four years, when stadiums and cities are thronged with blue-and-white-clad supporters from the South American nation.
“The World Cup is the only movement that can bring a country as divided as ours together,” Mr. Celestino said.
For many Argentines, financing tournament trips has rarely been straightforward. Argentina’s volatile economy, with low wages and skyrocketing inflation, often forces people to work two or even three jobs to make ends meet. The average monthly income for registered workers is about $1,200, and nearly half of the work force operates informally, often earning less.
But experts say it is precisely because of Argentina’s history of political and economic instability that world-class soccer serves as a key linchpin to their national pride.
“We are a poor country, we are a failed country, but we are the best fans,” said Pablo Alabarces, a sociologist and author of several books on soccer.
Some fans start saving at the end of one World Cup for the next one, while others commit funds they don’t have.
Even though finances are precarious, Mr. Celestino said his wife, Micaela, plans to quit her teaching job to go to the World Cup. The couple has taken on several thousand dollars of debt to fund a monthlong stay in the United States. Mr. Celestino said he had already maxed out several credit cards, held a raffle and asked friends and neighbors to chip in. But like many others, he is waiting to buy tickets, hoping prices come down nearer the games. Argentina plays twice in Dallas and once in Kansas City, Mo. “I’m hoping there’s going to be a kind soul to help me out,” he said.
Over the years, fans like Alejandro Solnicki have developed tricks to save money. Instead of buying a direct flight to the United States, Mr. Solnicki, 41, a casino worker, will be making a five-day odyssey through São Paulo, Aruba and Charlotte, North Carolina, before arriving in Missouri for the first game. Still, he paid $750 a ticket for each of Argentina’s three games. “We spend whatever it takes because we’re fanatics; we don’t use rationality,” he said.
Comfort is not part of the calculation. Mr. Solnicki said that for a recent qualification game in Colombia, he shared a one-bed hotel room with 10 others. “We all slept sitting up,” he said.
Argentine fans had shown that same commitment to the team and their compatriots at the World Cup in Qatar, where they were celebrated for traveling in huge numbers to bring life to an event that sometimes lacked atmosphere.
Reminders of those efforts remain visible in both Buenos Aires and Qatar, thousands of miles away.
At the barbecue in Buenos Aires, fans gathered under a banner the colors of the Argentine flag that read “BARWAGENTO,” a reference to the Qatari neighborhood built to house migrant laborers that was briefly but famously taken over by Argentina soccer fans during the tournament. Their temporary home in Qatar has been permanently renamed “Argentine neighborhood.”
The passion and pageantry of Argentine soccer fans that has made them envied and emulated was in full one recent week at El Monumental Stadium in Buenos Aires, home to one of Argentina’s two biggest clubs, River Plate. The stadium has sold out its 85,000-person capacity for more than 100 consecutive games.
Fans armed with drums and percussion instruments lustily sang odes to their team before and throughout the games, only pausing for a break when the players did at halftime. Against bitter rival Boca Juniors, they produced a thrilling display, eclipsing anything on the field. A fan committee had stayed up the night before to turn 40 tons of paper into white confetti that greeted the teams on the field. The singing did not let up.
That emotion risks being absent from the forthcoming World Cup if too few Argentine fans are present, said Jose Serio, who is trying to score a ticket to what would be his sixth tournament.
“They’re taking out the most beautiful thing that football has: the flags, the drums, the colors — they’re killing that,” he said. “If they don’t lower the prices, they won’t have that atmosphere.”
Some regular World Cup attendees have decided to give up — in protest as much as out of necessity. Rodrigo Diez, 36, a customs worker, said he had been to three previous World Cups where he had paid $50 (in Brazil), $70 (in Russia) and $70 (in Qatar) and was not willing to pay prices that “make no sense.”
“Going there would be like playing into their hands, so that for the next World Cup, they’ll just do the same thing again,” he said, and added: “It makes you angry that they take something that should be for everyone and turn it into something that is just for the few.”
