World Cup Ticket Prices Remain Stubbornly High As Games Begin

Even with plenty of World Cup tickets unsold, the resale market for the global event beginning Thursday in North America remains stubbornly high. 

As the tournament formally starts with two matches in Mexico, each one of the 16 group-stage markets has an average get-in ticket price of more than $300 on the resale market. 

According to aggregated ticket information from Ticket Data, all 16 of those markets have also seen average price increases this week, with seven of them escalating by double-digit percentages. Four group-stage locales—Guadalajara, Mexico City, Miami, and New York—still have an average get-in price of more than $1,000.

The overall average get-in price of $665 as of Thursday morning for group-stage matches is essentially identical to December, when the tournament draw happened and the World Cup ticket lottery opened. 

Market Factors

In the six months since then, there have been many twists and turns in the World Cup ticket saga, including FIFA’s much-derided dynamic pricing model that sees pricing change in real time based on demand and availability—in turn, impacting the resale market as well.

Earlier this week, there were signs that demand was somewhat overstated, at least for some matches, including nearly 180,000 tickets that were still available on FIFA’s own resale portal.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino again defended against what has been months of blistering criticism of the tournament’s ticket prices and practices, and said Wednesday he wasn’t concerned about incoming investigations by attorneys general in four states about the ticketing situation. Those probes involve tournament match hosts California, New Jersey, and Texas, as well as New York and represent some of the country’s most populous states.

“We are very relaxed about it because before starting to sell 6.5 million to 7 million tickets, we check what we do with the best lawyers,” Infantino said. “If we do something wrong, then probably everyone selling tickets in North America is doing something wrong as well. We welcome every investigation, we’re happy to present everything, and we’re happy to make our case.”