Collecting FIFA World Cup sticker albums — a perennial favorite among football fans — is expected to be more expensive than ever this year due to global inflation.
In front of Qatar events in NovemberItalian producer Panini SpA has increased the price for packs with 5 stickers to 12.5% in the UK, bringing the cost to fill a 670 sticker album to around £870 ($1,014).
Panini released his first World Cup album before the 1970 events in Mexico. Since then, it has attracted children and adult collectors, who gather at home, on the streets and now online, to exchange cards in the quest to complete their sticker collection. . Panini reached 1 billion dollars in revenue in 2018 amid a strong World Cup year.
During the 2018 World Cup, a mathematician at Cardiff University, UK calculate On average, a fan needs to purchase 4,832 stickers to complete the album, which will set the collector back £774.
In the US, where 50 packs are sold for as little as $62 on Amazon.com Inc. and $72 at Walmart Inc., could cost $1,160 to complete the album, about $150 more than in 2018. In Brazil, where 40 million stickers were sold on average every day before the 2018 World Cup, each pack is now on sale. for R$4 (78 cents), double as much as four years ago. According to the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics, the cost of completing the album amounted to R$3,865, one and a half times the average monthly income of the country.
Panini, which has been producing sticker albums since 1961, also released rare stickers to pay homage to the 20 star players. A card with Argentina’s Lionel Messi is sell for $490 on EBay Inc., while Brazil’s Neymar Jr and Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo can be found for close to $400.
This is not the first time the price increase has caused a stir. In 2018, the publisher raised prices by 60% in the UK and 100% in Brazil over 2014 costs. Panini did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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