There are 48 flags being represented at the World Cup next month, but when it comes to FIFA’s ticket sales, the most prominent flag is red.
FIFA touted another ticket sale release Thursday afternoon — its third ticket drop in the “last-minute” sales phase since April 1 — with tickets available on a first-come, first-serve basis while supplies last. After spending more than three-and-a-half hours in the FIFA queue, I quickly realized that the supplies were plentiful. And they were lasting way longer than FIFA would like to admit, even for the world’s best and most popular teams.
“Every match is already sold out,” FIFA President Gianni Infantino said at a business conference back in February. “We keep some tickets back for some last minute sales, of course, but every match is sold out.”
FIFA walked back that claim, telling The Athletic that Infantino misspoke and that FIFA expects to sell out every game. Just over a month from the opening matches kicking off in the United States, Mexico and Canada, the question has to be raised about whether FIFA has oversold ticket interest this whole time.
On April 29, all but seven of the 72 total group stage matches in the tournament were listed on the FIFA ticketing website as having “limited availability.” Eight days later, 57 matches were listed as normal availability; only 15 were “limited availability.”
Want to see Lionel Messi and defending World Cup champion Argentina? Nearly every section of Kansas City’s Arrowhead Stadium has tickets available for its opener on June 16 against Algeria, with a get-in price of $770.
England should be a country that sends some of the most fans to the States to watch the Lions compete for their elusive World Cup crown, yet nearly every section in the upper bowl has tickets available for its opening match against Croatia at Dallas’ AT&T Stadium on June 17, with a $920 get-in price.
Essentially the whole upper bowl has tickets out there for Brazil’s much-hyped opening match against Morocco on June 13 at MetLife Stadium outside New York City, the first group stage match in the tournament between two teams ranked in FIFA’s top 10. The get-in price for that match is $1,265. Germany, one of the most popular teams, is having trouble selling out its opening match against Curaçao on June 14 at Houston’s NRG Stadium, with tons of available tickets for a relatively bearable get-in price of $425.
“We have the request for 1,000 years of World Cups at once,” Infantino boasted in January at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “This is unique. It’s incredible.”
Based on the amount of available seats on Thursday, the economics have clearly not worked out as planned for FIFA, and for fans who feel priced out of the action. A Seton Hall University poll released this week showed that just 30% of American soccer fans tried buying World Cup tickets as of April, compared to the 40% who planned to buy tickets when asked back in October.
“I wouldn’t pay it either, to be honest with you,” President Trump said Wednesday about World Cup ticket prices.
Even the host countries are having trouble filling stadiums for their own matches. More than 5,000 tickets are still available for the U.S.’ opening match against Paraguay on June 12 at Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium, with the get-in price still at $1,120, the same as it was last week. Its second group stage match a week later against Australia — another team that should be well represented in the stands — at Seattle’s Lumen Field has tickets available in all but a few sections of the upper bowl for a $906 get-in price.
The opening match of the whole tournament between Mexico and South Africa at Mexico City’s famous Estadio Azteca still has more than 1,000 seats left, with all but one ticket going for $2,985. Canada’s June 12 opener against Bosnia and Herzegovina at Toronto’s BMO Field has plenty of tickets left with the get-in price slashed from $1,645 last week to $1,100 on Thursday.
Even some games FIFA has designated as having “limited availability,” such as Haiti’s June 13 opening match against Scotland on June 13 at Foxborough’s Gillette Stadium, has several thousand tickets still available.
FIFA is starting to lower some prices where there was clear diminished interest, with the get-in price for the June 22 match between Jordan and Algeria at San Francisco’s Levi’s Stadium slashed from $380 to $140.
Prices continue to decrease for at least some games on the secondary market, too. On the Gametime app, tickets for Austria’s June 16 match against Jordan at Levi’s are as low as $144. The get-in price for New Zealand’s June 21 match against Egypt at Vancouver’s BC Place is $199; Jordan-Algeria a day later is going for $182; tickets for Bosnia and Herzegovina’s group stage finale against Qatar in Seattle can be had for $186 and the Cape Verde-Saudi Arabia game in Houston on June 26 can only set you back $151.
Per ticketdata.com, which monitors World Cup ticket prices, get-in prices for 62 of the 72 Group Stage games have dropped over the last three days.
And it’s not just tickets that are still available. Hotel rooms are, too. A World Cup outlook released Monday by the American Hotel & Lodging Association found that among hoteliers surveyed across the host cities, 80% said hotel bookings are tracking below initial forecasts.
Thirty-five days remain before the World Cup kicks off with Mexico taking on South Africa in Mexico City. That game, despite a get-in price of $2,185, does not have much availability left — but not even that game is sold out.
Infantino claimed FIFA received “requests for over 500 million tickets — 508 million, to be precise — for around 7 million tickets that we have on sale.” It doesn’t appear that amount of interest has materialized just yet, and it’s not hard to prove. You just have to check FIFA’s own website.