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The World Cup is captivating audiences with viewership numbers that have already hit historic heights, but retired soccer legend Gareth Bale says there needs to be a solution so that “normal” fans are not priced out from actually attending games.
Bale, who played most of his career for Real Madrid and Tottenham Hotspur, expressed excitement for the World Cup in a Monday interview with Front Office Sports about his new sports investment fund. But he said the exorbitant ticket prices are “something that needs to be addressed.”
Although many tickets remain for sale, including directly through FIFA or on resale markets, the price of those tickets just keeps climbing. Each one of the 16 group-stage markets has an average get-in ticket price of more than $300 on the resale market, and most tickets are more than $400 apiece. Resale prices have jumped by 70% over the last two weeks, according to aggregated ticket information from TicketData. The cheapest ticket for sale as of Monday morning was $273, for the June 26 match between Egypt and Iran at Lumen Field in Seattle.
“It kind of feels like it’s losing that interaction with fans” who “live and breathe” soccer, Bale said.
“I would love to see everything come back a bit and give that, kind of, normal fan the accessibility to just go and watch their team play,” he added.
Despite Bale’s plea, the average price of tickets continues to soar. Tickets for games featuring Mexico had an average get-in price of $3,268 as of Monday morning, marking the highest average get-in price, followed by Portugal at $2,158. The U.S. men’s national team has the fourth-highest average get-in with a price of $1,764. Of the 48 teams competing, 26 have average get-in prices of higher than $1,000.
Ticket prices have been an issue since before the tournament kicked off. FIFA has gotten plenty of flak for its dynamic pricing model that sees pricing change in real time based on demand and availability.
While ticket prices remain an issue, the quality of play has so far been high and viewership numbers are off the charts. FIFA, Fox Sports, and Telemundo said over the weekend that their first two featured broadcasts of the tournament both drew historic audiences, including an average of 6.3 million viewers for the June 11 tournament opener between Mexico and South Africa, as well as an average of 15.99 million viewers for the U.S. men’s team opener Friday against Paraguay. The former represented the most-watched group-stage match ever on English-language U.S. television that didn’t involve the American team, while the latter was the U.S. men’s team highest in English-language U.S. broadcast history, according to Fox research of Nielsen data.
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