At first glance, absolutely nothing.

One is a global sporting event watched by billions. The other is an essential public service that helps ensure access to justice.

Yet both are increasingly governed by the same principle: dynamic pricing.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup has already generated headlines because of the extraordinary cost of tickets. Unlike previous tournaments, prices are expected to fluctuate according to demand. The more people want to attend a match, the more FIFA and its partners can charge. Defenders argue that this simply reflects market realities. Critics argue that it allows organisers to extract the maximum amount of profit. However, it is also clear that dynamic pricing is making football less accessible to many people who cannot afford these eye-watering ticket prices. For me, this takes some of the joy out of a global sporting event.

Court interpreting operates according to a surprisingly similar logic, but with a crucial difference.

When demand for World Cup tickets increases, prices go up.

When the supply of interpreters increases, rates often go down or stagnate.

Court interpreting in England and Wales is funded by public money and delivered mainly through one contracted agency for spoken languages, TheBigWord. The House of Lords inquiry into court interpreting has confirmed that dynamic pricing mechanism is used to set interpreters rates. Within this framework, interpreter income has been under continuous downward pressure. Many interpreters report declining earnings over time, and for some, work that was once viable is becoming insufficient to cover basic living costs.

This is not simply an individual business problem. It is a structural issue shaped by how contracts are designed and how pricing power is distributed. Recent ministerial correspondence has acknowledged that the current framework does not adequately protect against exploitation.

Taken together, these developments raise a more uncomfortable question: what happens when public services are organised in ways that allow value to be extracted by commercial actors, while the risk is pushed onto individual interpreters?

Public services are funded by taxpayers and must operate under principles of fairness, accountability, and accessibility. Yet the current structure of outsourced court interpreting raises questions about whether those principles are being upheld in practice. This is exactly why I argue that professional bodies, academic institutions, and journalism should engage more urgently with these shifts. As a result, broader questions about value extraction, pricing power, and exploitation remain underexplored in public debate.

As a result, broader questions about value extraction, pricing power, and exploitation remain underexplored in public debate.

It is also worth noting that fans are not told they need better ticket-buying skills to cope with FIFA’s pricing model. Yet interpreters are frequently told that the solution to falling rates is better negotiation, entrepreneurship, or personal branding, even when pricing dynamics are shaped by structural conditions beyond their control.

About the author
Fardous Bahbouh is a researcher and broadcast interpreter specialising in labour rights and the political economy of the translation and interpreting industry. Alongside her academic research, she continues to work with agencies and production companies that value interpreters and translators and provide fair working conditions. She also runs a small translation company and does not generalise critiques of unfair intermediaries to all translation companies or agencies.