At his kitchen table in San Antonio, beneath a wall of Boca Juniors memorabilia and a framed Lionel Messi Barcelona jersey, Hector Pineda traced a pen down a list of numbers in his notebook.

Pineda, 68, a construction manager born in the same Argentinian town as Messi, keeps his expenses in a worn notebook divided between business and personal costs. When he and his wife, Miriam, 64, bought two upper-level tickets to see Argentina play Austria at this summer’s World Cup, the trip felt manageable. The tickets, $484 after taxes and fees, were the big purchase. Everything else, they thought, could be controlled.

Six months later, the notebook told a different story.

The World Cup has always been a premium event, but what is different this year is how many travel costs are rising simultaneously, compounding the financial pressure. The conflict in Iran has pushed energy prices higher, and those costs are showing up in parts of a trip that fans cannot always lock in months ahead: gasoline, restaurant meals, rideshares, parking and hotel rooms.

As World Cup travel costs rise, fans will still make their way to cities across North America — but many are cutting back in ways that could make the tournament’s economic windfall more uneven than host cities expected.

“We downsized our life just so we could afford to do special things like this, and this happens only once,” Pineda said. “But when you’re on income that doesn’t change much, every extra cost matters.”

The Pinedas’ anxiety points to a broader affordability problem surrounding the 2026 World Cup. The travel economy has remained resilient despite higher prices, but it is increasingly divided by income. A recent report from the Bank of America Institute found that most travelers have not canceled plans, but many are adjusting at the margins — taking fewer trips or cutting accommodation budgets.

Overall, spending among the richest third of households is up 2.6 percent over the past year, according to the institute’s data. Among lower-income households, spending is up just 0.6 percent.

“We’ve really seen a divergence open up since around the sort of spring, early summer in our data,” said David Tinsley, senior economist at the Bank of America Institute.

For the Pinedas, that divergence is playing out one line item at a time. Nationally, the average price for a gallon of regular gasoline is about $4.53, according to AAA. In San Antonio, regular gas has been hovering around $4. For the Pinedas, the 560-mile round trip to Arlington, mostly along I-35, consumes about $90 in gasoline alone — before parking, food or lodging.

“The longer these gasoline prices persist, the more that will gradually sap consumer discretionary spending,” Tinsley said.

To control what they can, Pineda and his wife booked a budget motel and plan to pack road food to avoid restaurants. They are comparing parking options and considering walking part of the way to the stadium, even in the Texas heat.

“We’re not trying to live like kings,” he said. “We just want to see Argentina play.”

Miriam has already drawn a line around how many matches they can afford.

“I stopped Hector at one match,” she said. “I told him, don’t get too crazy. We can find a TV somewhere.”

That kind of cost-cutting is not limited to older fans. Younger fans are also making logistical compromises. A Bank of America Institute survey found that 93 percent of Gen Z respondents planned trips this summer, and 20 percent were targeting sporting events.

For Mo Subrainian, 26, and three former college roommates from DePaul University, a road trip from Chicago to New Jersey to see Brazil play Morocco at MetLife Stadium quickly became a budget challenge. They cut the trip from five nights to two and are staying with Subrainian’s aunt, who lives an hour from the stadium.

“This wasn’t the epic trip we planned, but we aren’t canceling,” Subrainian said. “We’ll meet up with friends in the area who don’t have tickets and make the best of it.”

Those household-level decisions could matter for host cities. World Cup organizers and local officials have promoted the tournament as an economic opportunity, with visitors expected to spend on hotels, restaurants, bars and transportation. But fans who shorten trips, avoid hotels, pack food or skip extra nights may deliver a narrower boost than businesses are hoping for.

The issue is not that the World Cup will fail to bring crowds. It is that not all crowds spend the same way, and not all spending creates new local economic activity.

“A ton of the people are just going to be locals, and they’re putting money into FIFA’s pockets rather than in the pockets of other local businesses,” said Victor Matheson, a professor of economics at the College of the Holy Cross who specializes in mega-events. “So that doesn’t actually increase the size of the economy; it just rearranges where the money is being spent.”

That dynamic could matter in the United States, where many fans will travel domestically and may treat the tournament as less of a luxury trip. They may still buy the ticket, but spend less freely around it.

The pattern is visible in the hospitality sector. About 40 percent of surveyed Americans said they planned to experience the World Cup in some capacity, according to the Bank of America survey. Ticketless fans could still fill streets, bars and public viewing areas, but their spending may be more targeted than that of international tourists taking longer trips.

Still, enthusiasm does not guarantee a broad tourism boom. Hotel market analysts say the boost may be concentrated around match days and in specific host markets, rather than spread evenly across cities or the national economy.

Jan Freitag, national director of hospitality market analytics at CoStar, said a mix of higher costs and uneven fan interest could shape travel decisions.

“I think it’s a confluence of a war going on, airfares are high, ticket prices are high, and in the first-round stages, maybe those matches aren’t super interesting,” Freitag said. “So, maybe it’s sort of a little bit of everything.”

The result could be a World Cup economy that is real, but uneven — strong in certain places and moments, weaker outside the stadium gates.

For Pineda, the calculation remains emotional as much as financial. Seeing Argentina play in his adopted home state is, in his words, “priceless.” Yet the numbers in his notebook continue to climb.

“We are going to try to make it work,” Pineda said. “But when you add everything up, you start to wonder who this World Cup was really built for.”