NEW YORK (Bloomberg): The 2026 World Cup features an unprecedented 104 matches after FIFA expanded the competition to include 48 teams. By the tournament's end, Gianni Infantino will have attended nearly half of them.
To do so, the FIFA president has flown about 93,000km (57,700 miles) between the three host countries – Canada, Mexico and the United States – on a luxury Gulfstream G650ER operated by Qatar Airways that FIFA pays to use, according to a Bloomberg calculation of the shortest distance between airports based on numbers from JetSpy, an aviation data provider.
That's equivalent to lapping Earth's equator twice.
Suited and surrounded by football officials, Infantino has been such a ubiquitous sight at this year's tournament that one online joke claiming he was present at two simultaneous games went viral. Infantino didn't bend the rules of space and time to attend two games at once, but he did attend two games played on the same day in different cities – sometimes in different countries – on 13 occasions.
His attendance is especially notable due to the unprecedented scope of this year's tournament. In 2022, Infantino made a point of attending all 64 matches held in Qatar – a country smaller than Connecticut. Not only does this year's tournament have 40 more matches, but it's also the first in FIFA's century-long history to be hosted by three countries.
FIFA will consider stretching the next tournament even further to include 64 teams, Infantino told Swiss broadcaster Blue Sport. The 2030 World Cup will be co-hosted by Morocco, Portugal and Spain.
Infantino's longest travel day was June 26, when his jet flew more than 5,500 miles. After watching Ivory Coast defeat Curaçao in Philadelphia the evening before and spending the night in Miami, he flew to Dallas, where he briefly visited Jordan's team. An hour and a half later, he jetted off to Seattle to catch the match between Egypt and Iran. After the game, he flew back to Miami for the night, where he watched Colombia and Portugal the next day.
The 56-year-old FIFA president will have watched six games in Miami – more than any other location – following Saturday's third-place match between France and England. He relocated to the South Florida city two years ago ahead of the tournament.
A FIFA spokesperson declined to comment on Infantino's World Cup itinerary.
Scattered boos
The World Cup caused a spike in demand for private jet charters this summer as wealthy soccer enthusiasts built multi-city travel itineraries, said Barry Shevlin, chief executive officer of private aviation company FlyUSA. But it would take the average private jet customer at least a year to travel anywhere near 57,700 miles, he said.
Infantino's World Cup itinerary could cost more than US$350,000 in jet fuel alone and produce over 700 tonnes of CO2 emissions, Shevlin said. That's roughly equal to the annual carbon footprint of 40 average Americans.
When Infantino is at a World Cup game, broadcasts often cut to him more than once. Those cuts have occasionally been met with boos from fans reacting to Infantino's numerous controversies throughout the tournament – most notably FIFA's rare decision to rescind a one-game ban given to US player Folarin Balogun after President Donald Trump made a phone call to Infantino requesting the penalty be revoked.
Infantino's close ties to the Trump administration were on display at the United States' opening match against Paraguay, which he attended with Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Paraguayan President Santiago Peña.
More often than heads of state, Infantino has attended matches with the presidents of soccer federations from around the world who participate in FIFA's Congress. An expanded World Cup is an opportunity for the FIFA president to meet his constituents as he seeks a fourth term as the head of soccer's governing body, said Declan Abernethy, a lecturer at the Georgia Institute of Technology who studies the sport's history.
"The way that this system works is by relationships," Abernethy said. "He recognizes that those relationships are critical. Being there gives him authority, but it also shows who he is beholden to."
Infantino is widely expected to be reelected by the FIFA Congress, which has representatives from 211 countries and holds an election next March.– Bloomberg
