Fifa raised its top ticket price for the World Cup final to $10,990 (€9,536) during the glitch-hampered reopening of sales on Wednesday after the 48-team field for this year’s tournament was finalised.
The top price for the final had been $8,680 (€7,533) when Fifa sold tickets after the tournament draw in December. Fifa’s Category 2 tickets for game at MetLife Stadium on July 19th are now $7,380 (€6,403), up from $5,575 (€4,837), and Category 3 now costs $5,785 (€5,019), an increase from $4,185 (€3,631).
The most expensive ticket for the final of the 2022 World Cup was priced at about $1,600 (€1,388).
Tickets were listed for the final and 17 of the 72 group-stage matches by Wednesday night.
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Fifa is using dynamic pricing for the tournament, which will be played across the United States, Mexico and Canada.
The governing body did not announce which games and price categories were available in the new wave of tickets, leaving fans to search on the Fifa website, which often took hours to enter.
Some who clicked on what Fifa called its “last-minute sales phase” when the process opened on Wednesday morning were directed into a queue for “PMA late qualifier supporters sales phase,” aimed aid fans from the six nations that qualified on Tuesday night.
Fifa did not have an explanation as to why the link misdirection occurred but around midday said the links were working properly.
Fifa added that not all remaining tickets were being put on sale, with additional tickets to be released on a rolling basis.
This phase, which will remain open throughout the tournament, marked the first time a specific seat location could be bought rather than a request for a ticket in a category, Fifa added.
For the month-long sales phase after the World Cup draw in December, tickets were priced at $140 to $8,680 (€121-€7,529). After complaints, Fifa said $60 (€52) tickets would be made available to each participating national federation for their most loyal supporters, an amount likely to be 400-700 per team for each match.
The use of dynamic pricing has come under criticism from fans and lawmakers.
“The employment of dynamic ticket pricing for the 2026 FWC starkly contrasts with Fifa’s core mission to promote the accessible and inclusive promotion and development of soccer globally,” 69 Democratic members of the US Congress wrote in a letter to Fifa president Gianni Infantino last month.
“Despite host cities’ co-operation in bringing the vision of the largest, most global World Cup in history to fruition, the consequences of dynamic pricing will make the 2026 FWC the most financially exclusionary and inaccessible to date.”
Fifa also has its own resale market, in which it collects 15 per cent from both the buyer and seller.
Infantino claimed in January that the amount of ticket requests Fifa had received was the equivalent of “the request for 1,000 years of World Cups at once.”
It was unclear if many of those requests were for seats in the lowest-price categories.
Fan groups have voiced concern over the soaring costs for resold tickets and one filed a formal complaint to the European Commission last month.
Infantino defended Fifa’s cut of resales, saying the governing body was engaged in a legal commercial activity under US law. Some European countries have laws which can restrict resale by requiring tickets to be sold for face value or only by authorised partners of the event organisers. – Guardian
