$1,718 for Two Bedrooms? World Cup Pricing Explained

Jasper Ribbers:

$1,718 a night for a two-bedroom. If you want to know how we got that price, then keep listening.

What's up everybody, welcome back to Get Paid for Your Pad. Today we are doing an update on the FIFA World Cup. So we did an episode around the FIFA World Cup that takes place in June and July of 2026 in the United States, Canada and Mexico. We did an episode, I think it was the first week of December, that was when the draw was for the schedule. So the schedule was released at that point, except for a few countries who are still in the qualification process for the World Cup.

If you haven't listened to that episode, highly recommend go listen to that episode first. Today, we're going to give you guys an update on what we're seeing in the different cities where the games are going to be played, and also some insights on what kind of prices to expect, how many bookings have been coming in, and some tips on how to maximize revenue during the World Cup.

What Is the FIFA World Cup?

So if you haven't listened to the first episode that we did, I'll do a quick recap, quick overview of what's going to happen. First off, what is the FIFA World Cup? It is the biggest sports event in the world. It might even be the biggest event in the world.

Essentially, there will be, I think it's 48 countries will be participating in the FIFA World Cup that will take place in June and July. And it's going to be massive. There's going to be millions and millions of travelers coming to the United States, coming to Mexico, coming to Canada to take part in these games, to watch the games essentially.

There's going to be a lot more people than the amount of tickets that there are for the games, because there's going to be fan zones. The countries, the teams are going to be staying in certain areas as well, and that always attracts a crowd as well. People want to watch the trainings, or people want to get a glimpse of the players, maybe get an autograph or something. So outside of the games, there's still a lot of people that are going to be traveling, even if they don't have a ticket, because they want to be part of the experience.

A lot of the cities where the games are being held, there's going to be fan zones and even in between games, I think there's still going to be a lot of additional travelers spending time in these cities than any other year. And even the areas outside of the cities where the games are being played, I do expect an increase in demand because people are not just going to be traveling to the States just to see one game.

International Travel Expectations

A lot of people are going to be coming from South America, from Asia, from Europe. Those are the areas where soccer or football, I always get confused on who calls it soccer, who calls it football, but anyway, there's going to be a lot of people that are going to be traveling from pretty far. And they're not just going to watch one game. They're probably going to be staying for at least a few days, if not a week, if not two weeks, and take advantage of the opportunity to see a little bit more of the country.

And so I think especially the areas, the touristy areas around the cities where the games are going to be played, I think those are going to be seeing an increase in demand as well. And that's actually something that we've already established in terms of the bookings that we've seen coming in. There are some beach markets in Texas where I've noticed that pacing is pretty far ahead of previous years. And I've seen some pretty good ADRs coming through in those markets.

So I think it's clear that people are starting to plan their travels. And they're not just looking at where to stay for the games. They're also looking at what else is there to do in the area. And they're starting to book accommodation for those extended trips, if you will.

The Initial Booking Wave

First off, let me kind of give you an update on what we've seen so far. So on December 6, the match schedule was released. That was the moment when people, the fans all across the world, they now knew what cities are going to be hosting what games.

Now, what we saw initially after the schedule was released, we saw an immediate influx of bookings coming in. However, it stopped pretty quickly. It was a short wave of bookings that came in. And I think what happened is that as soon as the schedule was released, people went bargain hunting, right? There's always hosts that are not aware of these events happening or they haven't adjusted their prices accordingly. They're not using a pricing tool. They may be just manually pricing or they don't realize the potential of this event.

And so we did see a fair amount of bookings come into the market. But they were all at fairly reasonable prices, very low prices. So I think what happened is in the first wave, people are scooping up the underpriced properties because the bookings stopped pretty quickly.

Current Occupancy Levels

Most of the markets that we are in, the current occupancy for the World Cup period, and let me remind you when it starts. The first game will be held on Thursday, June 11. And the last game will be the final, which is on Sunday, July 19. So there's a solid five weeks that this event will take place.

And we have seen bookings coming in mostly, of course, for the days around the games. But I would say the typical occupancy that we're currently seeing in these markets is anywhere between like 10 to maybe 25% occupancy, right? So there's still a lot of inventory that has to be filled up. I mean, I think it's a very small minority of the people that have already booked their accommodation. So there's still a lot to come.

I think, as I mentioned, I think people have been scooping up the underpriced properties because if you go on Airbnb now and you just do some searches, and this is, I would say this is probably one of the best ways to do research and understand what kind of prices you could potentially get for your units, just very old school. Go on Airbnb and just start searching. Just search for the different games that are being held and look at the dates. Look at the day before the game, the day after the game, and just see what's available.

Kansas City Market Example

I actually just did a search in Kansas City because that's one of the cities where my team from the Netherlands is going to be playing. And I've been following the news in the Netherlands around all the fans. Are they already booking? What are they talking about? There's different forums and stuff that you can find information, which is tough. By the way, it's not a bad idea to, if you're hosting a game from, let's say, Germany or something, see if you can find some forums in Germany. You probably need Google Translate, right? But it's good to see what are the fans talking about.

And are they already booking? What's the discussion that's going on? Because that will give you some insight from the guest perspective.

What Dutch Fans Are Saying

Now, for the stories that I've been hearing in the Netherlands is, well, first of all, people are a little pissed off that the prices for the tickets are really high. I think the prices are way higher than they've ever been. I think the FIFA did make available a number of cheaper tickets. But the overall price level for the tickets is still very, very high. And I think that's also kind of dampening the early booking demand for accommodation a little bit, because I think a lot of people are kind of on the fence on like, hey, do we really want to go? It's going to cost a lot of money.

I mean, you're looking at at least several hundred dollars for a ticket. But if you want a good ticket, like you might be paying up to like $500, $1,000 or even more than that. Right. And then of course, there's the travel, the flight. Tickets are going to be very expensive as well. And then accommodation, right?

So realistically, for somebody from my country to travel to the States and, let's say, attend one game, let's say, spend like a week and then fly back, you're probably looking at easily like $5,000 for that trip, if not more, right? And then $5,000, I'm saying that's kind of like the budget way to do it, right? Trying to find the cheapest accommodation, trying to find a cheap flight, getting some of the cheaper tickets. But it could escalate pretty quickly above that.

So that's something that a lot of people in my country are talking about, how it's going to be very expensive. Now, people are very passionate about soccer. So I do believe that people are willing to pay these prices. But I think a lot of people are holding off for now. They're seeing if the FIFA maybe will be releasing some more tickets at a cheaper price level.

Ticket Availability Issues

There's also less tickets available than demand, right? So I think the way it works is for every game, like for example, for the Holland game, we play our first game against Tunisia in Kansas City. It's going to be on the 25th of June. I mean, the stadium probably holds like, I don't know, 60,000. A lot of these stadiums are pretty big, you know?

I think the biggest stadiums can hold almost 100,000 people. But the amount of tickets that are being made available to the countries that are playing is relatively pretty low. Because a lot of the tickets also go to sponsors and relationships. So there's limited amount of tickets that are being made available to the countries that are actually playing these games. And there's way more people that want to get a ticket than there's available.

And so a lot of countries, they'll do like drafts, right, or lotteries, or they have different systems in place to actually decide who's going to get a ticket, right? So if I want a ticket to this game, I have to be a member of the fan club. And then also, I have to put in my desire of how many tickets do I want. And then I just have to wait and see how many tickets are going to be assigned to me, right? So obviously, every country, it probably works a little bit different. But my point is a lot of people may not even know if they are going to be able to get a ticket.

Visa Considerations

And then there's also the visa situation, right? A lot of countries, you need a visa to travel to the United States. And a lot of times that means like going to the embassy, you know, handing in your passport, standing in line, and you know, it can be a little bit of process. And then you have to wait a while before you get approved for it. So I'm sure there's also a lot of people that want to travel to the States to attend the game. And they might already have a ticket, but they're still waiting on their visa. So they might not book the accommodation until they actually got approved.

Now, there's been talk about the US immigration making it easier for fans to travel to the States and putting some special visas in place. I haven't seen anything concrete there. But I think these are some of the reasons that a lot of people still haven't booked their accommodation. They're still in the process of like planning and deciding if they want to go and then planning their trip.

Real Bookings We've Received

But from what we've seen so far, we did see a few bookings come in at pretty elevated prices. So I'll go through a few markets and kind of give you an update on what we're seeing.

Seattle Market

So first off, Seattle is an interesting market because before the schedule was released on December 6th, there's a couple of games that were already known. And Seattle is one of the cities where the games that the US is playing, because the US, Canada, and Mexico, they already knew that they were qualified. And they already knew the games that they were going to be playing.

So the US is playing Australia on the 19th in Seattle. And so that game was already known a while back. I can't remember exactly when they released that. But I'm looking at Seattle now, and I'm seeing that about 65% of, at least we have a two-bedroom there, 65% of the two-bedrooms are already booked for that game. We did not get a booking for that yet.

But we did get a booking for the 26th of June. So I'm going to see what game that is. So the 26th of June in Seattle, it's Iran versus Egypt, I believe it is. The schedule is using these abbreviations for these countries. I'm always, it's always a bit confusing to see what abbreviations stand for what country. So it's a little bit of a puzzle sometimes to figure out who's playing, but anyway, that game, we actually did get booked and we got a pretty good price. We got booked at $1,268 for a two-bedroom in Seattle. And for that game, I see the occupancy is now at 43%.

Now, those are the games that have been booked up the most. And I think it's because those games have been known, or at least the US game was known for quite a while.

Kansas City Market

Now, another city I mentioned, Kansas City. I don't see any bookings coming in. I don't see any bookings that we've received, but the prices are pretty elevated. I was looking at Airbnb. So for the game that we're playing on the 25th of June, there are very few places, if I want to stay downtown Kansas City, let me just zoom in a little bit. I mean, it's going to be over $1,000. I don't really see anything for less than $1,000. Even a one-bedroom goes for over $1,000.

So you can get an idea of what kind of prices you might be expecting. I think the smaller cities are probably going to see the highest price increases. Like a city like Los Angeles and even New Jersey, I think there's so much hotel inventory in those cities that it's going to dampen the premium that we can get. But the smaller cities like Kansas City, Philadelphia, Seattle, these are cities with limited inventory, right? And so inventory is going to run out fast.

So in Kansas City, I'm only seeing like 10 to 25% of inventory booked. But if you look, if you actually do a search in Airbnb, you'll see that the prices are like super elevated. And so I think the strategy for those cities is just holding out, you know, just waiting. Most of the demand is still going to come.

So what you don't want to do is like panic now and lower your prices and then you're going to be missing out on a big opportunity.

Philadelphia Market

So another market that we're in is Philadelphia. That's the market where we got this booking that I mentioned at the start of the podcast episode. We got a booking at $1,718 for a two-bedroom unit.

Now, Philadelphia is interesting because there's not only the World Cup and there's a round of 16 game on that date that we booked, which is July 4th. Well, that's also Independence Day. And it's exactly 250 years ago that the United States was founded. I think it was in 1776 when, I believe it was Thomas Jefferson. I hope I'm not wrong on that. I'm not a native from the United States. I don't know the history that well, but I'm pretty sure it was 1776. And I think the Declaration of Independence was actually signed in Philadelphia.

So I think there's going to be a lot of festivities around that. And that's actually a good point to keep in mind as well. Obviously, the soccer World Cup is going to attract a lot of people to the States, but there's also the regular demand. June and July in a lot of markets are very good months, very high demand months in general. So there's also people that are just going to be traveling for other reasons than the soccer. So that's something to keep in mind as well.

But yeah, we got that booking, $1,718.

Will These Bookings Stick?

Now, of course, we don't know if that booking is going to stick. There might be some people that book something now knowing that they can cancel for free because we're so far out. Unless you have a strict cancellation policy, people are going to be able to cancel, right? At least like a month in advance or a couple of weeks in advance.

So the question is, if you get bookings at really high prices now, it doesn't necessarily mean that those bookings are actually going to stick. Because what some people might do is they might book something, and then they might just wait and see, right? And every now and then they'll go back on Airbnb to see if they can find something more affordable.

So we don't really know what's going to happen. My expectation is that all of these bookings are going to stick because I don't think the cheap inventory, quote unquote, or the underpriced inventory is already gone. So there's no deals around anymore. So the only way that prices are going to come down from here is if we get close and the market's not booked up yet, because people are going to start panicking when we get closer to the check-in dates.

So let's say we're halfway through May, and there's still quite a lot of units on the market. Now people are going to get nervous, and now people are going to start dropping their prices. So I think that's kind of like a scenario that hopefully we won't see. But it is possible that if demand is not going to be as strong as we expect for certain games or in certain cities, that people might drop their prices.

If inventory doesn't book up completely, people might start dropping their prices as we get closer. And then those people who are still in the free cancellation period, they might cancel their booking and book something last minute at a cheaper rate. So as of right now, that's still far away. But that's something to keep an eye out for and keep in mind that that is possible.

Strategic Monitoring

So I think it's really important to really, if you're in one of these markets, like really important to keep track. Look every week, just look at the bookings, any bookings that came in for you, but also look at the competition. Do a search on Airbnb in your city and really try and understand like, how many people are booking? Look at pickup.

I haven't seen much pickup come through in these markets recently. It was really, as I mentioned, there was really like a quick wave at the beginning. Right? December 6 and kind of like the weeks after, there was a bit of a wave. That wave has now slowed down. So I think most people are kind of in a wait and see position. The hosts are playing wait and see. And I think the guests are also playing wait and see.

And it's kind of like a cat and mouse game of like, all right, we don't want to pay these super high prices. But we're going to need to book something at some point. So we're going to wait and see if some prices are going to start coming down or not.

Some people may have booked something, and some people maybe they don't care about the price. Obviously, there's always people that are more price sensitive than others. So some people might just lock it in. They're just happy that they found something, and they're not going to be canceling it.

Business Travelers and Journalists

Now, another thing that I learned from following the conversation in my country is there's also a lot of people that are going to be traveling for business, because there's a lot of journalists that are going to be traveling. Of course, anybody that works, because these are big events, right? These games are pretty big events. There's fan zones and stuff. So there's going to be people working as well. There's going to be people that are part of the FIFA organization, the sponsors. There's a lot of people who are probably less price sensitive that are going to be traveling.

I was listening to a podcast about soccer last week and there was a couple of journalists that were discussing the World Cup on the podcast and they already booked their accommodation because their company is paying for it. But they were talking about how expensive it was, right? So they booked hotel rooms but they were paying like over $1,000 a night and they were talking about how expensive it was. But these are people that are traveling for work, right? So they are not as price sensitive as some of the fans might be.

So there's a lot of things to consider.

Final Recommendations

But as of right now, I think as far as maximizing revenue on these, especially on the game dates, I would say you definitely want to keep your rates high. You don't want to start lowering your prices yet. Most of the demand is still coming.

But I do recommend like keep a close eye on what's happening. See if you can get information around like how many tickets have been sold. What are the ticket prices? What do the ticket prices look like? What do airline tickets look like? Put yourself in the position of your potential guest. If you're hosting a game or your city is hosting a game, Germany against another country, think about, put yourself in the shoes of the German guest, right?

How do they travel to your city? What are airline prices? What are ticket prices? What kind of accommodation options do they have? Are there any areas nearby where they could stay, where they could maybe catch an Uber?

Those are other considerations, because that's something that people might be looking at as well. It's like, hey, if I want to see a game in Kansas City, but if I have to pay $1,000 a night for a one-bedroom, I might look a little bit further out and say, hey, what if I stay an hour away and I just rent a car? And maybe I can book something for like $200 a night and just drive up or take an Uber or something that might actually be cheaper.

So that's something to consider as well. It's like, hey, what's happening in the surrounding areas?

Wrapping Up

Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you have any insights or comments or suggestions, feel free to reach out to me at jasper@freewild.com.

And if you're interested in us doing a free revenue report for you, you can apply for that at freewyldfoundry.com/getstarted or /report. I think both those links work. We'll get on a quick call with you to understand your portfolio and your goals. And then we can create a revenue report for you where we can show you where the biggest opportunities are in your portfolio.

And if we think it's a win-win to work together, then we'll also let you know how we can work together.

So again, hope you enjoyed this episode. Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time.