Image by Talanta Sports City
All 15,000 tickets released in the first sales phase for Bayern Munich’s friendly against Ajax in Nairobi have sold out. At Phase One prices, a full 60,000-seat house would gross at least approximately $1.2 million and at most approximately $9.2 million in ticket sales, *according to BOSA estimates. The January 5, 2027 match will open Kenya’s $350 million Raila Odinga International Stadium, and the remaining tickets will go on sale in later phases.
Phase One sales
Sales opened on November 5 on the official Talanta Sports City ticketing platform. Phase One prices ran from Sh2,500 ($19) to Sh20,000 ($154), with premium hospitality packages also available. The three cheapest categories, priced at Sh2,500 ($19), Sh3,500 ($27) and Sh5,000 ($38), reportedly sold out within approximately three hours. Organisers confirmed on November 10 that the whole of Phase One had sold out and fans picked their seats online, with up to 10 tickets per order.
China Road and Bridge Corporation built the stadium at Talanta Sports City for a reported KSh45 billion. It is Kenya’s main venue for the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations, which Kenya co-hosts with Uganda and Tanzania from June 19 to July 17. Sports Cabinet Secretary Salim Mvurya has said both clubs have committed to bringing their strongest available squads. Match day will also include a 12-hour fan festival with entertainment and hospitality around the stadium. ProSieben will broadcast the game in Germany, with coverage on FC Bayern TV PLUS and Joyn subject to regional restrictions.
What a full house could be worth
Organisers have not yet disclosed revenue, but depending on which categories made up the batch, Phase One alone would have grossed between Sh37.5 million ($289,000) and Sh300 million ($2.3 million). For illustration, if seats sell at an average of Sh7,500 ($58), a full house would bring in approximately Sh450 million ($3.5 million). These BOSA estimates exclude hospitality and assume later phases keep the same prices. The real number of sellable seats will also fall below 60,000 once media, security and segregation allocations are taken out.
Fees, funding and disclosure
Those figures sit next to the reported cost of bringing the clubs to Nairobi. German media have put Bayern’s appearance fee at €5 million (approximately Sh724.6 million, or $5.6 million), a figure neither the club nor the government has confirmed. Covering that sum from ticket sales alone would take an average of approximately Sh12,000 ($93) per seat across a full stadium, before counting Ajax’s fee, travel, security and staging. Ticket sales are only one revenue stream, alongside sponsorship, hospitality and any broadcast income, none of which has been disclosed. The reported fee is at the centre of a High Court petition by six Kenyans seeking disclosure of the event’s financing, which the court declined to certify as urgent. The government has said the private sector will fund the match, but the corporate sponsors and the size of their contributions have not been disclosed.
A rehearsal for AFCON
Stadium openers are rarely judged on the the tickets sales, and the government has presented the match as a rehearsal for the continents biggest sporting event. Ticketing, stadium operations, security, transport and crowd management will all be tested under live conditions approximately six months before the 2027 AFCON. The phased release with seat selection is a working trial of systems Kenya will need in June to be successful. Later phases will show whether demand holds once the less expensive tiers are gone, offering an early read on local fans’ willingness to pay for premium football.
*Revenue figures are BOSA estimates based on published Phase One ticket prices, converted at the Central Bank of Kenya rate of Sh129.96 to the US dollar (November 5, 2026). They exclude hospitality packages and do not reflect actual sales data.
