Leah Ray sat down to work out what following England across America for the World Cup would cost.
Then she shared the number online, presumably to feel less alone about it.
£38,986.
READ MORE: My country hasn’t reached a World Cup since 2014 – so I’m flying to America to cover it ANYWAY
The 24-year-old model is planning to follow the Three Lions through the entire tournament in the United States, a 40-day trip ending, she hopes, with football finally coming home.
The budget she has drawn up suggests she’ll need a small fortune to be there when it does.
“Worked out how much going to the World Cup would cost,” she said in a video posted to social media.
“You guys ain’t gonna believe the total.”
£186 a day before she’s seen a single match
The headline figure is enormous, but the daily spending is where it gets properly silly.
Leah has set aside nearly £3,000 for beer and wine across the trip.
That’s about £75 a day, every day, for over a month.
Food adds another layer. She’s budgeted £5,203, which works out at roughly £111 a day.
Put the two together and Leah expects to spend around £186 daily just on eating and drinking her way through the tournament.
For context, that’s more than some people spend on food and drink in a fortnight.
Where the rest of it goes
The single biggest cost isn’t the booze. It’s the tickets.
Leah has earmarked £11,893 for her England match package, and £3,716 of that is a single ticket to the final, assuming England get there to make it worth buying.
Accommodation across the 40 days comes in at £10,555.
Flights from London cost £5,575.
Then there’s £2,230 for getting around the US internally, and £557 set aside for the miscellaneous things that always cost more than you plan for.
It adds up to one of the priciest World Cups going for any travelling fan.
The fans were not impressed
The comments did what comments do.
“Told you, crazy prices,” one wrote. “I could buy a new car for that,” said another.
Someone simply asked, “Food $7,000?”, clearly unable to move past it.
The best response cut deepest: “$50,000 to watch Dan Burn and Jordan Henderson kick a round object.”
One fan summed up the wider mood. “I don’t see how anyone can afford to go and I really can’t imagine how a family of four would be able to afford it, it’s ridiculous.”
Why It Matters
For creators, this is the format working exactly as designed.
Leah didn’t need to do anything except total up a spreadsheet and react to her own maths.
The cost itself is the content. It’s relatable, it’s outrageous, and it hands the audience something to argue about, which is the whole game when engagement is the currency.
The 2026 tournament, spread across the US, Canada and Mexico, is shaping up to be the most expensive World Cup ever for fans who actually want to attend.
Creators documenting the price of going are going to do well out of it, whether or not they ever buy the final ticket.
What happens to that £3,716 if England go out in the group stage is a question Leah’s budget doesn’t answer.
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