Rio Ferdinand is talking about the cost of attending this World Cup, with tickets for the most part around double the amount they were in 2022. “I think that’s wrong and should be looked at,” he says. “At the next tournament, they shouldn’t be able to get to that point.”
Ferdinand was hired by FIFA to host the World Cup draw in December, but he acknowledges the problems with affordability at this tournament.
Analysis by The Athletic found in early June that a Category 1 ticket to the final cost $10,990 (£8,350), up from $6,730 in October. Group-stage prices ranged from $140 in Category 3 for less glamorous games, to $890 in Category 1 for Colombia against Portugal, and nearly $3,000 for the World Cup opener between Mexico and South Africa. For the first time, FIFA has used dynamic pricing, where numbers fluctuate based on demand.
“I think the same thing about air travel, when the holidays are on, they put the flights up,” Ferdinand continues. “Hotels go through the roof. ‘We’ve got a World Cup, ah jump the prices up.’ Every industry takes liberties when certain situations arise. This is just a reflection of what happens in the real world.”
He does, though, recognise the issue with using that business model for a game loved by millions all over the world.
“It takes so many different football fans out of the equation to have the ability to watch a game, which isn’t nice,” he continues. “This is the people’s sport, but when you price people out of it, then it becomes something different.
“I’d like to think FIFA would look at the next tournament and find a way to do it that suits more people, I’m sure.”
Could Ferdinand, with his connections at FIFA, lobby for that change?
“That’s beyond my level,” he replies. “But listen, when I do see guys that are within FIFA, we do have these conversations. I’m not sitting here just blind to it. You do go, ‘Well, how come it is that expensive?’ There are explanations that they talk about, but it’s not my area of expertise. I can only say what I feel, and I do think it’s too expensive.”
Ferdinand was within the FIFA machine during the World Cup draw in Washington six months ago, hosting the live event that was broadcast around the world. Given his roots in inner-city London, he seems genuinely proud at having that role. “It was a surreal moment where you do pinch yourself and go, ‘Rah, I’ve actually done that,’” he says. “You’ve got Donald Trump there on the stage, then the biggest names in all the American sports, Wayne Gretzky, ice hockey, Shaquille O’Neal, basketball, Tom Brady, NFL, Aaron Judge, baseball. You’ve got Kevin Hart hanging about, Heidi Klum, these names are ridiculous, and then I’m hosting it.
“I didn’t even understand any of the bloody permutations. So until the morning of it, and I’d done my last rehearsal, I was still unsure about what things meant. It only clicked on the morning of the actual show. The guys that helped me at FIFA were brilliant.”
At the last World Cup in Qatar, Ferdinand was saying what he feels on sporting matters as a pundit for the BBC, alongside Alan Shearer and Gary Lineker. Four years on he is in Los Angeles predominantly working to produce content for his YouTube channel, Rio Ferdinand Presents. He could have been an analyst again for a major network in the UK or U.S., but he is keeping his television appearances to Fox After Hours, a comedy show presented by his friend James Corden.
“Because that gives me freedom to do my stuff,” he explains. “I can do both (television and YouTube). James took me out for dinner and asked me if I’d want to host a show with him.” More on that later.
The setup for Rio Reacts, with Joel and Ste, for his Rio Ferdinand Presents YouTube channel
Right now, we are sitting on wide grey sofas in Ferdinand’s Beverly Hills villa, his base for six weeks, after his YouTube channel sponsorship with Airbnb, as Portugal ease to victory over Uzbekistan on a television screen attached to the wall in front of us. We will soon speak about another of Ferdinand’s friends, Cristiano Ronaldo, before heading to nearby bar Barney’s Beanery to watch England’s draw against Ghana with a group of fans, and, finally, to Fox Studios in Century City for his late-night show with Corden.
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First, it feels appropriate to delve deeper into Ferdinand’s reasons for shifting his focus from TV to online. He worked for 10 years as a pundit on BT Sport and then TNT Sports, but gave up the lucrative role in May 2025, with his last appearance being the Champions League final between Paris Saint-Germain and Inter.
Ferdinand, 47, can divide opinion with his occasionally outspoken approach, but he talks freely on any subject and hearing him invoke his upbringing in Peckham, south London, as he explains his choice last summer feels instructive.
“We own it, that’s the best thing,” he says of his channel. “All due respect, I’m going on these shows, which is good to a certain point, for exposure, but I’m building somebody else’s audience. We’re in an era now where it can be different, and I wanna explore that.
“I’ve never been one who wants to be pigeon-holed. I’ve always done things a bit differently. I’ve done ballet as a kid from this council estate. I did gymnastics. I moved from West Ham to go to Leeds, I could have stayed in London and been safe. Chelsea asked me to go and I said, ‘No, I wanna leave London’.
“Then, Man United come, I’m not scared to say to the chairman (at Leeds, Peter Ridsdale), ‘I am not leaving your office until you do a deal’.
“I’ve been a pundit for 10 or so years, loved every minute, looked after extremely well by BT and TNT. But it’s a new landscape now with digital media and social media and I’m able to build my own platform, where I have a lot more freedom, a lot more control of my diary, which is a massive thing with my family, moving to Dubai, and other aspects as well.
“I really enjoy the team I’ve got, not just on screen but behind the scenes. We’ve had the biggest and best guests most consistently, I think. We’ve got players and agents asking us, ‘Can we come on?’ Whereas before, I was having to really exert myself because you’ve got to prove yourself.
“Players trust in the environment we’ve created now and we see a different side to them.
“I don’t want to be seen as somebody who is trying to pull the carpet from under people. I don’t want to be the guy that I hated, all of a sudden the edit goes out: ‘Hold on a minute, what the hell’s that? You’ve made me look a f*****g idiot’. Most players have had it.
“I’ll probably get people who go, ‘Oh, Rio is only being nice for certain people to get interviews’. But I ain’t. I’m saying what I think and what I see, I’ve always done that.”
Ferdinand says he is willing to discuss “controversial” topics with guests but judges it depending on who it is (Credit: The Athletic)
Ferdinand’s network, having lifted the Champions League as Manchester United captain and winning six Premier League titles, means he has had Ronaldo, David Beckham and Thierry Henry on, as well as several more household names. His blueprint inevitably provokes the question of whether he can still challenge his interviewees.
“I think it depends who the person is,” he counters. “Their narrative determines how I approach the conversation. We have had people where I go, ‘Well, I want to go into this, which could be quite controversial’. But that person isn’t at the right point in their life.”
Ferdinand flags his interview with Casemiro, conducted at the Stretford End of United’s Old Trafford, as an example.
“Asking a player, ‘What do you think when someone said the game has left you?’ I don’t think he really wanted it.”
Not even to set the record straight at a moment of strength?
“Ideally, I think he’s like, ‘You know what, do I need to?’ He’s won five Champions Leagues. He ain’t gonna really need to answer to no one. But I couldn’t really have him there without asking that.”
The quote about Casemiro leaving football before it left him came, of course, from Jamie Carragher in 2024. Carragher has since accepted he got that assessment wrong, but he has barbed further with Ferdinand online over Mohamed Salah and World Cup ticket prices.
“These things ain’t serious for me,” says Ferdinand. “In the changing room, I was always involved in all that type of stuff, and this is just an extension of that. It ain’t no skin off my nose. If Jamie’s got an issue or something, he knows he can ring me, I can meet him, I don’t mind, it’s fine. But I don’t think it’s that far.”
Ferdinand’s interview with Casemiro has been viewed more than a million times on YouTube. After Ronaldo scored his first goal against Uzbekistan, Ferdinand uploaded a pumped-up celebration to his Instagram, which has been liked more than 350,000 times at the time of writing. These kinds of numbers are the things that do matter to Ferdinand, who is clearly invested and works a lot through a busy schedule.
He is a big supporter of Ronaldo, who he still messages, but even he feels there are limits at this World Cup. “I wouldn’t start Ronaldo every game,” he says. During the Uzbekistan game he calls for Roberto Martinez to take off the 41-year-old at 70 minutes to preserve his legs.
“You’re getting paid big bucks, man,” he says of Martinez, or any manager in that position. “The way you present these situations to the player determines how he receives it. If you don’t discuss it with someone like Cristiano, because you know his temperament and character, and you drag him off at 70 minutes, and he’s on two goals, he’s looking over and going, ‘Hold on a minute’. If you said, ‘Listen, we’re talking about the length of a tournament, we want you healthy and fit in game six…’ That should work. I think it’s a mistake to leave him on when you’re winning the game three or four-nil.”
These kinds of debates were being had when Ronaldo came back to United in 2021. Ferdinand had a role in the signing, waking up to take a call from Ronaldo at 2am.
“I was in bed with my missus and she said, ‘Rio you’ve got to get out of bed now, come on, I’m trying to go to sleep and you’re trying to sort out a contract with Ronaldo’.
Rio Ferdinand and Cristiano Ronaldo embrace at an Al Nassr game in September 2025 (Yasser Bakhsh/Getty Images)
“He said, ‘Can you help?’ So I spoke to Matt Judge (then director of negotiations), and the problem was timing, because the Glazers (the owners of the club) were in America. I said, ‘If you want him, you’ve got to come up with a certain number, and he’ll come back. He doesn’t want to go anywhere else.’
“He said, ‘Give me a bit of time to speak to the Glazers when they wake up’. He spoke to them, came back to us, and said, ‘Yeah, they’ll do it’.
“For me, I was delighted because the worst thing would have been seeing Cristiano Ronaldo turn up at Man City.”
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Ferdinand has got involved in other transfers, most recently Leny Yoro, and doesn’t believe a player he has spoken to has not joined United, with Paul Pogba and Edinson Cavani among them.
“I’ve not got a fixed role or anything. I was asked on the Leny Yoro situation, ‘You’re a centre-back Rio, he’s a young, Black boy, I think you’d be the right person to speak to him’.
“This has happened with multiple players before, some I’ve not spoken about. It’s because I love the club and I want the best.”
Yoro, 20, has shown promise but is yet to match the high expectations. “I think he’s got huge potential,” says Ferdinand. “The circumstances at the club probably hindered him a little bit.”
Similar could be said of Ronaldo as his United career hit turmoil under Erik ten Hag in 2022, soon after he had scored 24 goals in a season (18 in the Premier League and six in the Champions League). “I don’t know how a player can score that many and be the problem,” says Ferdinand.
The subject prompts a monologue from him about managerial flexibility, featuring Pep Guardiola, Ruben Amorim and Michael Carrick.
“I think the best managers are adaptable,” he says. “I always use Pep as a great example. He’s got a system he plays, he’s really controlling, setting up his teams a certain way to be able to thrive. He came to England, his first year didn’t win anything. Realised he’d never heard about ‘second balls’ and adapted. Played around the second ball more and he’d tell you that.
“So if the best in the game can be adaptable, everyone has to be adaptable. I think that was the problem with the last regime (Amorim) and I think Michael comes from that school of being adaptive in situations.
“He can play when we dominate possession, he’s also trying to be a team that can play off the back foot, and be a team that can defend a bit deeper maybe at times or for a mid-block. But the main thing is always to have an element of being dangerous to hurt your opponents at any time. That’s the team we played in. We weren’t the team that dominated every game.”
Ferdinand has spent time around United in recent months but is realistic about the buoyant mood. “It’s positive but listen, it’s always positive when you’re doing well. I went in pre-season and interviewed Bryan Mbeumo, Matheus Cunha and Harry Maguire and I hadn’t been around the club for a long time with the atmosphere really good. And then we started horribly.
“So you need the results to help with the environment. And one thing I would say, speaking to Casemiro, he said, ‘You can tell Michael Carrick knows the club, played football at the highest level, knows what’s in it’.”
Ferdinand continues: “Roy Keane could walk into the Man United training room, command respect immediately. But if you don’t get the result, that respect’s gone quick, football players judge people very quickly.
“Your history doesn’t count for nothing, after a period of time. If you show that you’re not the guy, or they’re seeing chinks in your armour, don’t matter what you’ve done. You can have a career like me, Roy, Gary Neville, whoever, you’ll be looked at down people’s noses: ‘Hold on a minute, you ain’t got no authority. Your voice don’t even sound right. You’re f*****g up a session’.
“Fabio Capello came in (at England) with a huge respect from AC Milan, but it was 4-4-2. And we were at a time where we needed something different. So it was a little bit underwhelming.”
It is time to travel to Barney’s Beanery, a bar a short drive away, to see if England’s current manager can inspire greater satisfaction. Ferdinand is watching Thomas Tuchel’s team against Ghana alongside his YouTube partners Stephen Howson and Joel Beya, who have been with him for years, and a group of fans.
Rio Ferdinand was stopped by members of the American Outlaws fans’ group (Laurie Whitwell/The Athletic)
“I like Tuchel’s bolshiness,” Ferdinand says. “He’s been bold in his selections. Other managers have folded to the pressure of the media and fans. He’s made a call on a couple of the big, big players who are more flair players and I’m not saying I agree with his decision, but I like how he’s gone, ‘I don’t care what anyone thinks’.
“I met him in Washington at the draw. He’s a really calm, confident guy. He isn’t scared to share his thoughts on players or his team and whatnot, and that just says to me he has a confidence there with him, which I really like.
“I think that if we get in a position, he’s risking to win. I’d rather be in that camp than be on the back foot, hoping we’ve just nicked this. And that’s how we’ve been.”
On his show, Ferdinand is sanguine at the final whistle. He reveals Darren Fletcher (his former team-mate and now head coach of Manchester United’s U18s) sent a message to a WhatsApp group of former players giving credit to Carlos Queiroz, United’s former No 2, for setting up Ghana as hard to break down, in a manner they were all familiar with.
We head back to the villa, where people come and go freely, including a friendly crew of producers, video editors and social media staff. Visitors during his stay so far include Danny Ramirez, who was in Top Gun: Maverick, Clarence Seedorf and Robbie Keane. Ferdinand tucks into an In-N-Out Burger as we get onto the subject of hydration breaks. “If all these players and these countries and these federations want the money, you’ve got to do a few things a bit differently,” he says. “There has to be a bit of give and take somewhere. They’re not affecting the game that much.
“This is something I see maybe happening further around. It could go into the Premier League or La Liga, etc. Because it’s more money. They’re going to look at it: ‘Let’s dig into it and find out how much more money came into the World Cup, to FIFA, just on these breaks’.
“So I’m saying, what if it’s a hundred more million? The Premier League are doing it (in that situation). And I don’t blame them.”
Ferdinand heads off to Fox Studios for his show with Corden, which puts him in a relaxed setting, beers on the table, talking about the day’s action. The audience is raucous and enjoying themselves, with Ferdinand at ease alongside comedian Ian Karmel and actor Anthony Anderson.
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Ferdinand got to know Corden after his Comic Relief skit in United’s dressing room in 2010. “I was a massive fan of Gavin & Stacey and I rang up the studio to see if I could get one of the series before it came out. He found out. He’s a massive West Ham fan, I didn’t know.
“It was when One Direction were in X Factor. I ended up meeting Harry Styles. He actually wore my United shirt in one of his first concerts in Manchester. James knew him, and then we all just chatted, and that was it.”
James Corden and Rio Ferdinand film their Fox show (Laurie Whitwell/The Athletic)
Corden’s mum and dad are also in attendance for the show, and both take part in the final segment, which recreates a moment from the day’s events. This time, they reprise Harry Kane’s miss, to show Corden’s mum Margaret could have scored it, highly tongue-in-cheek. She kicks the ball in after Ferdinand had taken on the role of Nico O’Reilly by heading against the bar. The crowd go wild. Later on, Ferdinand is stopped by fans at different moments and poses happily for pictures.
Ferdinand reflects again on England. “Nobody remembers the group stages,” he says. “I can’t remember who we played in the 2008 Champions League run. The business end happens in the knockout stages. Let’s get there and worry then.”
