How Canada Soccer plans to dish out FIFA World Cup tickets
If you’re looking to get your hands on FIFA World Cup tickets for next year, you’re not the only one.
One of the people tasked with getting tickets in the hands of Canadian fans is Canada Soccer CEO Kevin Blue, who started in the role in February 2024.
“Probably in the hundreds,” Blue said with a laugh in an interview with Offside when asked about how many ticket requests he’s gotten for next year’s tournament. “It will be growing substantially as the weeks and months go on.”
Canada Soccer has an eight per cent allotment of tickets for their home matches, with the choice of how to spread them out up to the federation. One of the ways it’ll be using its tickets is through relaunching the CanadaRED fan program. The program has seven different tiers of support, five of which are paid, starting at a fee of $50 a year.
Canada is scheduled to play three group-stage matches, in Toronto on June 12 and in Vancouver on June 18 and 24. The Canadian national team could also play up to an additional two knockout-round matches on Canadian soil, in the Round of 32 and the Round of 16, both in Vancouver.
Each tier will be given an equal number of tickets for next year’s World Cup, though higher tiers, by nature, may have a smaller number of members competing for tickets. Pricing for the tickets has yet to be announced.
“It’s also really important to note that people don’t actually have to make a monetary contribution to be part of CanadaRED and to be eligible to win a lottery, to have access to World Cup tickets,” Blue added.
Blue noted that in addition to the tickets available to the general public, some of Canada’s tickets will be allocated to player families, longstanding members of the Voyageurs supporters group, and alumni in the Canada Soccer Hall of Fame.
“We’re trying to do our best in the context of the World Cup ticket access issue, to be thoughtful about accommodations for long-standing members of the Canadian soccer community, while also building and enhancing a revenue stream that is going to reinvest proceeds directly back into the sport,” Blue added.
Interested fans can sign up via the Canada Soccer website.
For those who might sign up for CanadaRED but not end up with World Cup tickets, Blue hopes that people recognize the projects their contributions end up supporting the national team and other soccer programs throughout the country.
In conjunction with commercial partners, the Canadian government and the third-party agency Canadian Soccer Business that handles much of the national team’s commercial endeavours, including media rights, Blue stressed CanadaRED as a key component of Canada Soccer’s revenue generation plan moving forward.
“This is ultimately about making contributions to help support the continued growth of the sport,” Blue said. “If you have competitive aspirations that are, say, top 30, top 25 in the world, on the men’s side and top 10, top five, top three on the women’s side, you have to have resources that are commensurate with those aspirations.”
Who will Canada play before the FIFA World Cup?
Canada currently has five matches set to be played before the FIFA World Cup begins next year, with two of them on home soil.
So far, both home matches will be in Montreal, which missed out on a chance to host World Cup games next summer, with Australia announced as one of the two opponents. Canada will also be playing a neutral-site game against Colombia in New Jersey, and road contests against Romania and Wales.
Blue highlighted sporting considerations (quality of opponent), appearance fees (to pay to the opponent) and travel considerations (for the players and staff) as to what typically goes into the decision-making when setting up upcoming friendlies.
“One of the major challenges that we have faced historically is availability of facilities that have natural grass playing surfaces,” Blue said, a not-so-subtle reference to the current turf field at Vancouver’s BC Place, one of the largest stadiums in the country. (BC Place will have grass for next year’s World Cup.)
The Canadian men’s national team has played in Vancouver just three times over the last six years. They’ve played twice in Edmonton, once in Hamilton, and thirteen times in Toronto since the start of 2019 in all competitions, including World Cup qualifying, the Gold Cup, and friendly matches.
They last played in Winnipeg in 2000, Ottawa in 1999, and have not played in other major cities like Calgary, Quebec City, or Regina during that time.
“We’re eager to continue to move the teams around. Canada is a big country. We understand that it’s hard for people who live in various parts of Canada to commute to games like they might be able to in smaller countries in Europe. So we are eager to move teams around, and it is a significant sort of puzzle to put together,” Blue added.
Ticket sales have also been an inconsistent challenge for the men’s team in recent years, as they have not drawn above 25,000 fans for a match on home soil since March 2022.
“We’re a nonprofit organization. We’re not trying to generate maximum revenue for the sake of making profit,” Blue said. “We want to be able to make revenue and be commercially successful so that we can fund the operation of our national teams and other things that we do at the grassroots level. I think if you look at how our friendly ticket pricing has gone, it’s relatively more affordable compared to other high-profile sporting events.”
With less than a year to go until Canada’s first match at next year’s World Cup, all eyes will be on the squad — and its management team — to see how they handle this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
“It’s a responsibility and a privilege that all of us take extremely seriously,” Blue said.