Sammie Bell has followed England home and away for 20 years, so a month in America for the World Cup was never really a decision.
It cost her £3,100. The water cost £6.25 a bottle, which somehow felt like the bigger outrage.
England opened against Croatia at the AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas.
READ MORE: I’ve spent £90K chasing England across 30 countries – the World Cup hosts would rather watch HOCKEY
Eighty thousand seats. Home of the Dallas Cowboys.
According to Sammie, FIFA handed England fans about 4,000 of them.
“It’s still mad to me that FIFA only gave England around 4,000 tickets,” she said.
“The rest seem to have gone on corporate, locals and tourists willing to spend thousands.”
The ones who got in were, in her words, brilliant. The hydration breaks were not.
America has decided these pauses need entertainment, and Sammie would like a word.
“Can somebody tell the Americans we do not need a show during the hydration break,” she said.
“That’s just not football.”
£6 for a bottle of water
The stadium stunned her before she was even inside it.
“This place is absolutely huge, you don’t realise how big it is until you’re stood outside,” she said.
Then she found the bar. A pint of American lager ran to £12.
Imports and craft pushed it to £12.84. A 600ml bottle of water, the thing a human actually needs in a Texas summer, cost £6.25.
“The drinks prices were about what you’d expect at this point,” she said, which is its own kind of verdict.
How to follow England for £3,100
Here is the part that makes everyone else’s World Cup budget look reckless.
Sammie is spending almost four weeks in America, across six states and ten cities, and the whole thing is costing her £3,100.
Match tickets came to £575. Her share of the accommodation, £1,330. Flights, somehow, £150.
That last number is not a typo. The partnerships and events co-ordinator from Stevenage booked her flights with British Airways using credit card points.
“So I’m flying to Tampa and returning home from Boston and the flight only cost me £150,” she said.
Being part of the England supporters travel club helped too.
It got her friendly tickets at £23 for New Zealand and £28 for Costa Rica, well below what walk-up fans paid.
Her group-stage tickets landed at $220, $220 and $265.
Travelling in a group of seven meant the accommodation split seven ways.
Her route runs London to Florida for the friendlies, then Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, Boston and New York. Four flights.
Ten cities. One suitcase she is already sick of.
Watkins, ideally
She picked a good game to start on. England beat Croatia 4-2 under Thomas Tuchel, the first proper match of a habit that began at Old Trafford in September 2006, against Andorra.
Twenty years of this.
She is quietly hopeful, with reservations.
“I think we will do well, although for me I think France are the team to beat,” she said.
“Another last minute goal from Ollie Watkins to take us into the final like the Euros would be brilliant.”
Why everyone wants her receipts
Sammie is not a content creator by trade, but her trip is exactly the kind of thing the internet now eats whole.
A clean cost breakdown. A £150 flight hack that sounds made up. Receipts.
Tournament travel has become a genre, and the fans who can prove they did it cheaply are the ones people actually listen to.
The 2026 World Cup is the first 48-team edition, spread across the US, Canada and Mexico, and comfortably the most expensive to attend in the tournament’s history.
Supporters have answered by turning frugality into content, swapping flight hacks and accommodation splits the way they once swapped match predictions.
Sammie has Houston next, then four more cities and a month of airports.
France are still out there. So is the Watkins goal she flew the Atlantic for.
