Soccer America did a survey in March, and 88.9% of its readers said they want to attend the 2026 World Cup if they can get tickets. That includes 85.2% who said they want to watch the USMNT. We have some serious (and loyal) USMNT fans.

If you are like our family, the subject of World Cup tickets often arises.

Where do you get tickets? How much do they cost? When will they go on sale? After a little digging, more questions. Are these really the prices for hospitality tickets? And what is this Club World Cup that came up in my search?

My wife Shirley and I recently went to Hawaii, and the first text back from the family at home was from Shirley’s cousin Gerardo: “Does Paul have info yet on getting tickets?” (Gerardo, a San Francisco judge, was asking on behalf of colleagues in Mexico, where Shirley’s and Gerardo’s family are from.)

To set the record straight, as I had told Gerardo several times previously, I don’t have any inside track on getting tickets. All I know is what Victor Montagliani, the Concacaf president, told us when we talked with him at the Sports Business Journal event in Los Angeles in March. About five million tickets will be available and as many as 30 million people will register for the ticket process. The odds are long that you’ll win the World Cup ticket lottery.

When I explained these odds to Shirley, she replied, “So I’ll go to my grave without going to the World Cup?”

World Cup tickets are a sore subject with Shirley. In 1994, she couldn’t go because our son Paulie was born on May 2, less than six weeks before the tournament started, but everyone else in her family did.

She’ll rattle off which nephews and nieces went and which brother or sister took them to the matches at Stanford. There were some great games in 1994: USA-Brazil on July 4, the Sweden-Romania quarterfinal, Oleg Salenko‘s record five goals for Russia against Cameroon.

World Cup 1994 tickets were easy to get.

If I remember correctly, the Soccer America staff — we had 25 employees then — got a memo in our office mail slots — there was no email yet — in early 1993 and told to fill in our request for World Cup tickets as soon as possible. There was a pre-sale for World Cup tickets to the so-called soccer family, state association members and others involved in the game. It was as easy as filling out our meal order for the Christmas party dinner. (The response to the pre-sale was the first clue the 1994 World Cup would be an overwhelming success.)

Tickets then went on sale to the general public. As late as May 1994, a month before the tournament started, organizers placed ads in Soccer America. Tickets for games like USA-Colombia at the Rose Bowl were $25, $45 and $65. Italy-Ireland at Giants Stadium: only $30, $50 and $75. All you had to do was call an 800 number.