There will be 48 different teams/countries to dispute a single cup, the others leave "with nothing", it will be absurd 80 games to be played in 32 days (more than a month) and an almost incalculable income of more than U$ 6 billion. These will probably be the new World Cup numbers from 2026 onwards, numbers that in my opinion indicate extreme greed and politics on the part of FIFA and those involved.
The increase to 48 teams simply means that we will have more weak or average teams competing in a competition that should only bring together the best from each continent.
In my opinion, the pre-selections for the World Cup should gain more prominence and monitoring by Fifa, instead of increasing the number of teams in the main world football tournament that we have.
Dude, if you want to watch just 32 teams playing in the world cup, then you can do one thing. You can skip the group phase and then watch from the Round of 32 onwards. For fans like me, the expansion to 48 teams is the best thing that has ever happened with the FIFA world cup. It will add more diversity to the tournament, by including more teams from Asia and Africa. The current setup, being dominated by UEFA gets quite repetitive. Obviously the Europeans will be upset about it, but they need to admit that the era of European dominance in world football is over.