Thomas Majewski, the founder of Eagle Point Credit Management, has decided to take the gamble to lend tens of millions of dollars against the FIFA World Cup tickets, which will be held across North America in June later this year. This follows his discovery that the World Cup final tickets were listed at up to $ 20,000 USD on resale platforms.

Eagle Point is a Greenwich based private credit firm managing $14 billion in assets and has expanded a financing package to Sports Illustrated Tickets to help fund the purchase and resale of 2026 FIFA World Cup tickets.1 The deal is structured around a simple but unusual premise: Eagle Point lends the full cost of whatever tickets Sports Illustrated buys. In lending terms, that is 100% loan-to-cost, which would be considered reckless against almost any other asset.

The reason Majewski is confident in this venture is due to finacial rationale. World Cup tickets typically trade at up to three times their face value on the secondary market, meaning that a 100% loan against the purchase price is, in effect, only a 33% loan against the market value of the collateral. A seat behind the goal at the US team's opening match against Paraguay is currently listed on FIFA's official resale platform at $5,900 whilst the official value is $2,735.

"Of all the things I'm worried about, World Cup tickets selling below face value isn't one of them."

Thomas Majewski, founder and managing partner, Eagle Point Credit Management.1

How FIFA Became the Scalper

Eagle Point's confidence is grounded in a structural change to how FIFA has decided to run this tournament. For the 2026 edition (hosted across the United States, Mexico, and Canada) FIFA has allowed sellers on its official resale platform to name their own price with no cap. In US and Canadian markets, where such practices are legal, this amounts to the governing body operating its own scalping marketplace.2

Dynamic pricing: A system in which ticket prices fluctuate in real time based on demand, team popularity, and match significance rather than being fixed at a flat rate. FIFA applied this model during initial sales phases for the 2026 World Cup before partially walking it back following fan pressure.

FIFA previously took no more than 10% of resale fees. For 2026, it collects 15% from the buyer and 15% from the seller on each transaction meaning it earns $300 for every $1,000 spent on its resale site.2 Final tickets on the official marketplace have been listed at between $5,000 and $15,000 and above, depending on category, making this the most expensive World Cup in history by every measurable metric. Following a team from the group stage to the final could cost upwards of $7,000 in face value tickets alone.3

Fans were swift to respond. A group of supporters wrote to FIFA stating that implementing such a strategy "will be perceived as revenue maximisation under the guise of responding to market realities," adding that "the World Cup is not a commercial product like any other: it is a global cultural event."2 FIFA has since vowed to remove dynamic pricing from future ticket sales windows, though it has not altered its resale fee structure.

Key figures: USA v Paraguay (behind goal) face value = $2,735 · resale listing value = $5,900 · FIFA resale fee 15% each side · World Cup final at launch $4,000–$10,000+ · FIFA projected cut per $1,000 resale transaction = $300

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass have both publicly criticised FIFA's pricing approach. "You'd have to mortgage your house to be able to afford that for a lot of people," Mamdani told CBS News. Whether their criticism translates into any regulatory pressure on the resale market remains to be seen. 4

The Demand Problem

Wall Street's optimism has not been matched on the ground. A combination of high ticket prices, geopolitical tension, and a surge in anti-American sentiment has produced what analysts are now calling a meaningful demand shortfall, one that is rippling through the tournament's surrounding economics.

Hotel room rates on match days in several host cities have fallen by approximately a third from their peak earlier this year, according to data from Lighthouse Intelligence.5 The hotel industry had anticipated millions of international visitors generating a $30.5 billion economic boost for the US economy, a figure FIFA itself projected. That demand has not materialised. FIFA has begun cancelling tens of thousands of reserved hotel rooms in host cities as bookings fell short.

Data caveat: Hotel rate data cited here is drawn from Lighthouse Intelligence industry benchmarks as reported by the Financial Times in April 2026. Figures reflect average match day rates across major host cities and may not reflect individual property pricing or last minute market shifts.

The causes are multiple. Aran Ryan, Director of Industry Studies at Tourism Economics, identified three primary factors: higher ticket prices, fears around inflation, and anti-US sentiment who noted had been "made worse by the Iran war."5 In February, ICE Director Todd Lyons stopped short of committing to pause enforcement operations during the tournament, instead saying the agency would be a “key part” of World Cup security — a response that further dampened international confidence in travelling to the US. 6

Scores of seats remain available for numerous group stage matches. The prospect of partially empty stadiums echoes the thinly attended Club World Cup held in the US last summer which served as an early warning that international appetite for expensive fixtures in an unwelcoming regulatory environment may be more elastic than FIFA had assumed.

The Ticket Finance Trade

Against this backdrop, Eagle Point's underlying trade deserves scrutiny. The logic rests on a distinction that the demand-side data complicates: the difference between tickets that go unsold and tickets whose prices compress. An empty seat is not the same as a cheap seat. If even a smaller pool of high spending buyers is willing to pay $5,900 for a goal-end view of the United States versus Paraguay, Eagle Point's collateral holds its value. The question is whether that pool shrinks faster than expected.

Ticket price comparison: face value vs. resale listing, selected 2026 World Cup matches. Source: FIFA resale platform, April 2026.

A New Asset Class

The Eagle Point-Sports Illustrated deal is a small but revealing piece of a broader trend. Private credit has expanded aggressively into unusual collateral over the past decade. The common thread is inefficiency: markets where institutional capital has been slow to arrive, where information asymmetries exist, and where short-duration trades can generate yields that have been compressed out of traditional corporate credit.

Ticket receivables fit this mould. The trade is short-duration by nature since tickets are purchased, resold, and proceeds returned within weeks or months. The collateral is hard and identifiable. Demand for major events, when genuine, is relatively inelastic for a meaningful segment of buyers. And mid-teen yields in this corner of specialty finance compare favourably with a broadly tighter corporate credit environment.

The risks are equally concentrated. Demand shocks like geopolitical, reputational, or economic factors can compress secondary prices rapidly. Event cancellations present obvious tail risk. And the legal landscape around ticket resale is not static: several jurisdictions have moved to restrict or regulate scalping, and a regulatory shift in the US or Canada could alter the economics of the trade materially.

"Securing this $50 million facility [...] represents more than just capital – it's a signal that the market shares our passion in what we're building."

– David Lane, CEO, Sports Illustrated Tickets.7

For now, the maths holds and Eagle Point is betting it continues to hold through July 19, when the World Cup final is scheduled to take place at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey. At $10,000 a ticket, the demand assumptions underpinning the loan look comfortable. The broader question of whether the tournament itself lives up to the financial architecture constructed around it, is one that neither the lenders nor FIFA can fully control.

Footnotes

  1. Financial Times (opens in a new tab), "The US private credit firm betting on a lucrative World Cup trade", 17 April 2026; ↩ ↩2

  2. Sports Illustrated (opens in a new tab), "Unprecedented 2026 World Cup Ticket Prices Spark Wild Accusations Against FIFA," 3 December 2025. ↩ ↩2 ↩3

  3. Bookmaker Expert (opens in a new tab), "World Cup 2026 Ticket Prices: Full Breakdown", 16 April 2026. ↩

  4. CBS News (opens in a new tab) "NYC Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani vows to appoint World Cup czar over FIFA ticket prices", 14 December 2025. ↩

  5. Yahoo Travel (opens in a new tab) "Hotels across America slash summer rates as World Cup demand falls short, report says", 15 April 2026. ↩ ↩2

  6. BBC News (opens in a new tab), "ICE will be 'key part of security' at World Cup in US", 11 February 2026. ↩

  7. Business Wire (opens in a new tab), "Sports Illustrated Tickets Secures $50 Million Credit Facility to Accelerate Growth Initiatives," September 2025. ↩