Roberto Ruano has a luxury box at Mexico City’s Azteca Stadium where he and his family can watch football games and other events in privacy and comfort. He’s not planning to give that up for the 2026 World Cup. When the stadium is handed over to FIFA for the tournament co-hosted by Mexico and the United States, Ruano expects the world football body to respect a deal dating from the stadium’s construction six decades ago that gave box owners unlimited access to their seats for 99 years.
“We’ve already paid for the right to be there when we purchased the title and there can be no restrictions for us,” says Ruano, 61, the spokesman of an association of 134 box owners. “We have a title to support us. It’s not up for debate.
” It’s unclear whether the stadium owner and FIFA see it that way. FIFA wants full control of the World Cup stadiums 30 days before the first match and seven days after the last. But the peculiar history of how the boxes were purchased at Azteca makes things complicated.
To help finance the construction of the stadium in the 1960s, Mexican businessman Emilio Azcárraga Milmo sold boxes to private investors for 115,000 pesos, or about $9,000 at the time, giving the owners rights to use them for 99 years. That included access to football matches, concerts and other events, including the 1970 and 1986 World Cups in Mexico, Ruano says. “There were no issues in 1970.
For the 1986 World Cup they wanted us out and we met with FIFA officials, and.
