Prohibitively expensive ticket prices. Unbooked hotel rooms. Host regions spending millions with scant chance of economic payoff. Journalists, fans and an esteemed referee blocked from entering the country. Competition from a stunning N.B.A. finals series.
Even a joke from the Swiss team about snakes got a little out of hand.
A day after kicking off in Mexico, the World Cup arrives in the United States on Friday after a yearslong buildup filled with angst and controversy. But as the Americans prepare to play Paraguay in their first game, at SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles, there is also plenty of excitement to be found, particularly in host cities and immigrant communities.
Watch parties are expected to spill into the streets of neighborhoods like Little Morocco in Queens and Tehrangeles in Southern California, despite concerns about the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. A talented U.S. team features players like Christian Pulisic and Weston McKennie who have proven themselves on the international stage. A field expanded to 48 teams, playing across 16 host cities in the United States, Canada and Mexico, gives even more of the world a rooting interest.
“I feel that once the ball gets rolling, I’ll forget all of these negative things,” said Sandro Ferro, 48, who lives in Santa Clarita, Calif., outside of Los Angeles.
He has followed the U.S. team since he and his family moved from Peru in the 1990s, and was frustrated at not being able to afford tickets to their Friday night opener. “I have a lot of mixed feelings about this World Cup,” he said, but was confident that once the games start, “I’ll finally start getting excited.”
Prices have been the big wet blanket for many soccer fans. There are more games — 104, up from 64 in Qatar four years ago and 52 in 1994, the last time the United States hosted the men’s tournament — but this World Cup is also the first to use dynamic pricing, driving costs much higher than in 1994, when the cheapest tickets started at $25.
This week, a nosebleed seat to the U.S. game against Paraguay was going for more than $900 on secondary markets. Closer seats have been selling for more than $4,000.
The American Outlaws, a fan group that follows the U.S. men’s and women’s national teams, is usually able to secure affordable tickets. Trevin Wurm, 34 of Lincoln, Neb., is a member, but was unsure if he would be able to see the United States play in person.
“We were really excited to have a home World Cup,” Mr. Wurm said. “It’s been dampened because of the pricing and the inaccessibility for a lot of fans.”
The attorneys general of New York and New Jersey are investigating FIFA, soccer’s world governing body, over its ticket pricing and whether the organization deceived fans about seating options when they were making purchases. FIFA’s president, Gianni Infantino, dismissed those investigations at a news conference this week.
“If we’ve done something wrong, probably everybody in North America is selling tickets wrong as well,” he said.
It’s unclear whether the high costs will translate into empty seats at stadiums. Many fans have said they plan to wait and see if prices drop on secondary markets on game days.
Information on hotel bookings is also murky. A report released in May by the American Hotel & Lodging Association, an industry group, suggested they were lower than expected. Issues with visas may have kept some international fans away, the report said. But FIFA also overcommitted when it made block reservations, which created an “artificial early demand,” the report said.
FIFA is expected to earn more than $10 billion from the tournament. It’s unclear if host cities, which are required to bear the bulk of the costs, will see any economic benefit themselves. Officials have pointed to lofty economic impact estimates that most experts consider wildly inflated.
America’s scant mass transit options outside the Northeast add another layer of uncertainty. Organizers have been concerned about how fans from countries with plentiful public transit will fare in U.S. cities that are heavily dependent on cars.
No public transit serves the stadium in Arlington, Texas, site of the Dallas area’s games. Organizers suggest that fans take commuter rail to a station near Dallas Fort Worth International Airport, then ride a free charter bus to the stadium — a trip that the North Texas World Cup Organizing Committee expects to take about 90 minutes.
“After the first match, we’re going to learn a lot,” Monica Paul, the committee’s president, told the Dallas City Council last week. “We are going to be prepared to maybe shift and tweak things.”
Even in host regions with strong transit systems, like New York and Boston, transportation has been a hot-button issue.
NJ Transit is charging $98 for round-trip train tickets from Manhattan to the stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., a commute that would normally cost $13. Greater Boston, which is hosting seven games, is charging $80 for round-trip train rides to the stadium in Foxborough, Mass.
Officials in both regions blamed FIFA for imposing costly security requirements that drove up transit costs, and restricting sponsorships and other opportunities to recoup that money. Gov. Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey, a Democrat in her first year in office, said she refused to shift the exorbitant costs to taxpayers.
Dan Hunt, a scion of the sports dynasty that owns the Kansas City Chiefs, the F.C. Dallas soccer team — where Mr. Hunt is president — and part of the Chicago Bulls, predicts nothing but excitement across the country once the games start. Particularly, he expects that fans who traveled from abroad will inspire Americans.
“They have no idea what this means, what it means to them and their country,” Mr. Hunt said. “It is a passion that exists so much deeper and longer than most people have with any professional sports team in this country.”
