World Cup final tickets near $2.3m mark on FIFA’s resale platform
While no tickets are available on FIFA’s sales platform, they are being resold for sky-high prices on resale sites. In order to afford a last-minute
While no tickets are available on FIFA’s sales platform, they are being resold for sky-high prices on resale sites. In order to afford a last-minute ticket to the World Cup final at New York New Jersey Stadium — widely billed as the single most expensive sporting event ever played in the United States — you might have to be a millionaire, as the cost for a coveted seat at the venue crossed the $2m mark less than 24 hours before kickoff. As Lionel Messi’s Argentina face Spain and their teenage superstar Lamine Yamal, ticket prices have soared on the resale market. By Friday, nearly all tickets appeared to be sold, with a few listed on FIFA’s sales platform at about $32,000 apiece. On Saturday, there were no last-minute tickets available on the site. However, FIFA’s resale platform had tickets available from a little less than $10,000 to as high as $2.3m. The final caps a World Cup where fans were willing to shell out more than ever for a seat at the quadrennial showpiece, as ticket buyers confounded even the greatest cynics in the face of sky-high prices. It is a fitting end to a tournament that has tested the limits of what fans will spend, with FIFA’s gamble paying off after concerns over visa restrictions and domestic unrest in the US. “What FIFA did a very good job of was determining what demand would be because people [were] paying these absurd prices for just about all the 104 matches,” said Scott Friedman, a ticketing expert who previously worked for the Cleveland Cavaliers. “A year ago, we didn’t think people would be travelling with Trump’s ICE stuff and all this other conspiracy stuff.
But it’s the most popular tournament in the world by far globally, and FIFA, to their credit, they set the prices high, and people ended up paying them.” According to the Reuters news agency, an analysis of FIFA attendance data found that more than half the 72 group matches were attended to capacity, with most others only a few hundred fans short of a full house. About 99.7 percent of available seats were filled during the preliminary stage matches, FIFA said. The data erased early concerns that FIFA’s infamously steep prices would put off fans, after swaths of empty seats were seen around the Guadalajara Stadium for the June 11 match between South Korea and Czechia. Higher prices, higher demand As the tournament expanded to its largest-ever field, however, with 48 teams involved, so too did interest among fans. Prices were set initially at $575 a ticket for group games — more than double the most expensive group ticket available during the 2022 tournament — but FIFA’s dynamic pricing system meant that many ticket holders paid far more. Hundreds of tickets were still available for the final on Wednesday, priced at little more than $7,000 on FIFA’s platform, a surprising fact that prompted speculation over whether FIFA had finally gone too far with its prices. But the batch of seats available was likely the result of a process known as “slow ticketing”, Friedman explained, a common practice in mega-events in which organisers restrict inventory to motivate buyers. “They can act like they already sold their seats and kind of just dribble them in accordingly to obviously increase market demand,” said Friedman, who runs the Ticket Talk Network, dedicated to exploring how seats for sports mega-events are bought and sold.
The BriefWire