"It used to be for the people." That's how Eduardo Marin, born in 1986 — the last time Mexico hosted this tournament — describes what the World Cup has become. He drove a painted bus from Germany to Russia in 2018 with eight friends to watch El Tri. This time, with the tournament on his doorstep, he's not going to a single game.
The bus is gathering dust. And Marin isn't alone.
Across Mexico, the return of the World Cup after four decades has been met not with the street-party euphoria you'd expect, but with a widespread, quietly furious sense of exclusion. Ticket prices that would wipe out nearly ten months of a median Mexican salary. A TV landscape now hidden behind paid subscriptions. And licensing rules so tight that historic cantinas can't even say "World Cup" on a banner without risking a fine.
Priced out of their own party
For the World Cup opener at Azteca, fans reported paying between $3,000 and $5,000 per ticket. Marin's entire 2018 Russia trip — three matches included — cost him $5,000 total. FIFA's response? Prices are "in line with other major sporting events." That defense lands differently in a country where the median wage makes those numbers borderline unreachable.
The free-to-air television that made previous tournaments communal is largely gone. Many matches now require a paid subscription. TelevisaUnivision confirmed it's broadcasting 32 games for free, including all Mexico matches and the final — but that still leaves dozens of group stage fixtures behind a paywall, and the broadcaster acknowledged FIFA "significantly increased" rights costs compared to previous editions.
For bars and restaurants, it's worse. Luis Bernot, manager of Salon Casino — a proper old-school cantina in Mexico City's Doctores neighborhood — spent weeks redesigning promotional materials every time FIFA issued new restrictions. The word "World Cup" is banned. So are tournament-associated images. His current banner reads: "Soccer is lived and drunk," next to a flag-covered ball. Careful. Legal. Completely absurd.
Commercial broadcast licenses range from 4,000 pesos (around $233) for small venues to 22,000 pesos for larger ones. For places like Las Delicias de la Obrera, a small restaurant in the working-class Obrera neighborhood, paying for a commercial package simply wasn't an option. On a Saturday night during Haiti vs Scotland, the TV showed a telenovela instead.
Mexico got 13 games. The US got the rest.
Of 104 total World Cup matches, Mexico is hosting 13. Ricardo Arafat Garcia Tagle, a 42-year-old from the working-class Coapa neighborhood, said it plainly: "When they made it 13 matches, it felt insulting. Of the three countries — Mexico, the United States and Canada — this is the football nation!"
There's also the optics problem. In Monterrey, walls were erected along roads connecting the stadium and airport — blocking views of poorer neighborhoods. "They don't want anyone to see us," said San Juanita Barrera, 71, who lives in the area that was screened off. In Mexico City, axolotls — the city's beloved native salamander — were plastered across murals and train cars as a kind of curated local color for tourists. Residents weren't impressed.
Mexico's government has pointed to free public screenings as their answer to the access problem. That's something. But it's a long way from the grassroots energy that made tournaments like 1986 feel like a national event rather than a corporate hospitality package.
Marin put it simply: "I feel like it just doesn't have the same energy anymore. It's not the same."
He's right. And the tournament odds, the viewing figures, the atmosphere inside those stadiums — none of it will tell you what's actually been lost here.
