OoH: Air Transat Turns World Cup Sticker Shock into Travel Campaign

Air Transat has turned rising Fifa World Cup ticket prices into a travel campaign, using real-time cost comparisons between match tickets and round-trip flights.

Created with Courage Montreal, the “Tickets-Tickets” campaign taps into growing frustration over the cost of attending matches, particularly as Canada prepares to co-host several tournament matches. The campaign compares the price of a single match ticket with Air Transat fares to destinations tied to the teams fans are following.

The idea reframes the ticket-price debate as a travel pitch: for the cost of watching a country play inside a stadium, fans could fly there instead and experience its soccer culture firsthand.

According to campaign coverage, the work uses live pricing for selected matches and places it against Transat flight costs, making the campaign reactive and suited to online sports conversation.

“We saw an opportunity to create work that didn’t interrupt culture, but existed naturally within it,” said Rafik Belmesk, partner and head of strategy at Courage Montreal. “The idea worked because it connected a real consumer tension to a real brand truth in a way that felt immediate, playful and instantly understood.”

The campaign avoids direct tournament sponsorship language and instead enters the World Cup conversation by addressing a common complaint among fans. Air Transat said the idea was meant to show that soccer culture extends beyond stadiums into streets, cafés, and everyday life in destination countries.