Argentina vs England World Cup tickets more expensive than France vs Spain
The get-in price for the Argentina vs England semifinal has seen a 34 percent increase over the past three days. The World Cup semifinals feature
The get-in price for the Argentina vs England semifinal has seen a 34 percent increase over the past three days. The World Cup semifinals feature a pair of matches between global powerhouses, but tickets for one match are currently more than twice the price of the other. France are number one in the FIFA men’s world rankings and will play third-ranked Spain in Dallas on Tuesday. European champions Spain spent much of the World Cup year top of the rankings before being surpassed in April by the 2018 world champions. The price for their semifinal was $1,325 at noon Eastern Time (16:00 GMT) on Monday, according to ticket-tracking service TicketData.com. That represented a 26 percent decline over the past three days and the current price is less than half that of the other semifinal. Defending champions Argentina continue to be a massive draw and play their semifinal against England in Atlanta on Wednesday.
Major League Soccer (MLS) franchise Atlanta United FC have a strong Argentinian fan base and former Argentina national team manager Gerardo “Tata” Martino became the club’s head coach in November. The price for Argentina vs England was $2,841, a 34 percent increase over the past three days. Tickets had risen as high as $2,966 on Saturday, before dipping to $2,537 the following morning. That match is nearly twice as expensive as the third-place match. Scheduled for Saturday in Miami, the price for that is $1,543. Tickets for the final in New York New Jersey Stadium on Sunday remain at $6,760, although that is six percent cheaper over the past 72 hours. After reaching as high as $13,650 in October, tickets for the final were $12,301 as recently as June 21 and $9,911 on July 6. On Friday, FIFA had nearly 1,200 category two tickets for the final priced at $7,380.
The governing body’s last-minute ticket sales site, which at times had listed the game as sold out, had 1,178 seats available in five sections of the top deck along the sidelines: 282 in section 344, 299 in section 343, 139 in section 335, 443 in section 334 and 15 in section 333. Why are World Cup tickets so expensive? FIFA has repeatedly faced searing criticism over the cost of World Cup tickets throughout various sales phases ahead of the tournament, with one fan group filing a lawsuit over “excessive ticket prices”. In April, FIFA had four tickets on its resale market priced at $2m each; President Gianni Infantino joked about that, but otherwise defended the eye-watering prices, insisting that football’s global governing body was obliged to take advantage of US laws that allow tickets to be resold for thousands of dollars above face value. Experts link the pricing to multiple factors, the biggest of which is the allocation to the US of 78 of the 104 matches.
The BriefWire