Russia 2018: Ticket Thread (sales at face-value ONLY)

Just out of curiosity your teleconference were you all in the same country or in different ones? And if so which country got in first ?

 

Lol

 

Yes

From memory you must sell all of your tickets for a game. FIFA take 10% if they sell and refund your credit card.

The problem may be that FIFA will also be still trying to sell the same games.

 

I believe you can pick how many to sell - in 2014 I had to sell 1 out of 3 semifinals tickets and was able to do so.

Otherwise, yes fifa basically lists it for sale along with its inventory, and if it sells they keep 10%. It’s a pretty painless process.

 

I actually have to disagree here - if this was actually happening, fifa would just implement the fees themselves. The listings on viagogo are touts and/or short sellers who may not have tickets yet, and are playing off the fear and panic that some people have after striking out in the fifa ticket phases so far. If fifa was offloading tickets to viagogo, they wouldn’t be promoting the portal and implementing things like Fan ID.

FIFA likes having ridiculously priced tickets on viagogo right now because it means demand is high, and their ticketing phase process is working. Their whole strategy is trickling tickets phase by phase, creating and escalating the demand, and having crazy prices on sites like viagogo is part of it. It doesn’t mean they are in bed with them directly, but it is part of their plan for prices like this to exist.

 

Is anyone concerned they will crosscheck name on the ticket with the name on the FAN ID?

If they do,every ticket bought in the second hand market and I guess every ticket swapped,bought or sold in forums like this would also be useless.

 

No cause then big parts of the stadium would be empty since people swap, resell, give away etc but you have to have a valid FanID and valid ticket.. names doesn't need to match no matter what people report from confederation.

It doesn't necessarily mean official FIFA but people affiliated with FIFA and FIFA looks the other way or they have not much clue. Remeber all the delegates caught with tons of tickets?

 

I think that must be it. Some of those tickets on the reseller websites list the section they are in! How do they know that already? Those must be FIFA "insider" tickets.

I have not seen any statistics this time yet, but someone had posted them for 2014, and they showed that only 50% or so of tickets (if I am remembering correctly), were sold to the "public" by FIFA ( through "official" channels). The % was much less for some games, like the final. Now, we all know that 50% of the stadiums are not filled with FIFA people, federation people, government people/vips, and sponsors. So, where do those tickets really go?

 

This I agree with, but this is not unique to fifa. I went to Super Bowl 50 and I bought a ticket in a section designated for friends and family of one of the teams (for those that follow the nfl, it was the Carolina panthers). Now there’s no way that officially that ticket was supposed to be available to the public, but one of the family members put it up for sale on a secondary market site and I bought it. Does that mean the nfl has back channels to the secondary market though? No... rather the individuals who request special tickets choose to sell them sometimes, which I’m ok with. I still think lack of demand for this World Cup will work in our favor and prices on these sites will plummet.

 

Normally the Confed cup is test run for stadiums, security and ticketing. Our friends went to a confed game with tickets that were bought totally separately. They then swapped their match tickets to check whether FAN ID was linked to the ticket. Our report was that you scan the Fan ID and get a green light and then you scan the ticket. As long as you get 2 green lights you go through. So by them swapping the tickets by right It should of been an issue and it wasn’t.
So rest easy it’s not an issue to trade buy or sell as long as it’s a valid ticket and a valid FAN ID

 

FAN ID is a Russian requirement not FIFAs

Secondly FIFA openly states do not buy tickets by resellers or 3rd parties. Yet do nothing to actively engage them with litigation.

VIP Match Hospitality are FIFA way of getting a premium for tickets. However this premium is never sold out unless it’s a high end game so ultimately this deprives FIFA of this premium. What’s a perfect way to get it have an arms length relationship with the 3rd party resellers. I agree there is also short sellers and one off individuals looking to make a quick buck on there too.

Maybe I’m just getting more and more cynical with age but with Blatter, Valcke and the whole Russia/Qatar bidding process totally void of any fairness. I stand by the whole system is broken opinion and if there is an extra buck to be made gouging a fan then FIFA will lay down with many a reseller to get it. #FukFIFA

 

Just wait until the WC comes back to the US. No such thing as CAT4. Ticketmaster will be running the show with their 60% fees. And presales up the ass that all the resellers get first dibs on.

 

That sounds like a nightmare. Another reason to make Russia 18 extra special!

 

Yup, I think we’re saying the same thing, but I think the methods fifa use are different.

Basically I don’t think fifa themselves backchannel tickets to sell on viagogo or other secondary marketplace sites, but people who acquire tickets (either buying them officially from fifa or getting them via sponsors, etc) sell them on there.

Remember fifa sets the ticket prices, so if they thought they could make more money they’d hike up the prices. At the end of the day, they don’t really care about ticket listings with higher prices because theyve already sold/distributed those tickets, and they know that it will funnel more demand to their ticket portal (people will go to the portal if it’s cheaper there vs a resale site). I’d love to see what would happen if the prices on viagogo were significantly below face value in advance of some matches. I can see fifa either fighting with the resale sites, or buying those tickets back and reselling them in their portal, at their usual higher prices.

 

Remember that they’re trying to still promote the game in the US, as it’s still not super popular. They might bump up key matches like USA matches and knockouts, but on the whole I think the system will be similar to what we’re used to. And they’ll just bake any fees or hikes into the price itself.

 

it is probably good karma in your case
apart from that, you can't really compare this one to south africa. in terms of demand, it is somewhat simmilar, but south africa was random draw only in the first sales phase, followed by ridiculous amateurish second FCFS phase which was not really FCFS, it was actually nothing but proof that south africa couldn't handle the ticketing well. real FCFS came in the last minute sales phase closely to the tournament.
therefore it is hard to judge on demand and even harder to compare 2010 and 2018. still, due to everything functioning well this time, I'd say 2018 is easier to get tickets.

 

2018 couldn't be easier than South Africa unless the Russians have to pay the people they bus in to fill the stadiums.

For phase 1 in 2010 there were requests for 1,635,136 tickets. For phase 1 this time there were requests for 3,496,204 tickets. For Brazil it was approx 6.2 million requests.

I think the phase 1 demand is a good indicator. More than double the demand for South Africa but only slightly higher than half the demand for Brazil.

I'm discounting Germany which had high demand for almost every game.

Brazil's was also skewed even more so by venue than by competing teams.

Now even in South Africa there was demand in Cape Town. We had to pay face value for an extra. We never paid more than half FV anywhere else. It was very very difficult to get tickets in Rio and Sao Paolo in Brazil. It was difficult to sell spares at FV even for Mexico v Cameroon and v Croatia in the North East.

My reading of this is

1) Demand will be high in Moscow particularly for the Spartak stadium.
2) Demand will be high in SPB
3) Many games in Saransk, Rostov-on-Don, Sochi etc will be tough to sell .

Even a potential Mexico v Egypt game may not be too difficult to get in the end if in a remote location.

 

SK, I hear where you are coming from.
In my experience, though, (3 world cups done), I think you don't need to panic about group matches.
For the knockout matches, it is more of a concern, particlularly for the matches in Moscow and SP. Russia had a middle class that will attend the matches in these cities, so if you have a tight schedule, may be worth you paying up for those games.
If you don't have a tight schedule, though, after the draw I think you should feel comfortable picking up matches in the groups, particularly in the less 'glamorous' matches.
On that subject - I remember going to Ghana/Czech Republic group match in 2006. Not glamorous, but as it turned out, the best match in the group matches. so you just don't know how it will turn out.

 

Agree entirely with all this except would stress the problem with Spartak is the supply as i think the demand will be slightly less than for Luzhniki. It is a much smaller stadium and as sods law often has it at a WC the most interesting games games drawn to go to the smaller stadia.

 

I don't think anyone was saying have patience and you will get what you want from this phase but very much the long drawn out phases in March/April/May. I don't know what games you were trying for but the fact you got nothing in either section of the first phase must mean you were selecting pretty high demand games and of course they will be more difficult.

 

And because of the fan-id/visa situation less people will buy last minute before games.

I know it is stressful not having the tickets you want but if you try every chance we got and sit in front of a computer during every dump you will get every ticket you want.

I guarantee everyone will get final tickets too. If you are willing to pay for cat1!

 

I disagree with that. You under-estimate the Russian home demand.

 

Lots of speculation here.. It all depends who will play and where. If Brazil plays in Sochi then I can guarantee demand for that game in that city will go up like crazy. It's a Olympic game city, next to the sea and some nice resorts etc. Imo it's up to where popular pot1 teams plays. Let's drop the speculation and see what happens in the draw.

I just hope we see good fotball and none of that Euro bullshit defending crap.

 

That´s the beauty of the group stage.You just don´t know beforehand which match will be awesome and which one will stink da house up.
Other than following Sweden I really do not care who is playing who in the other three matches I plan to buy.One can just hope there will be some good football played.

 

People said the same about euro16...

The russians have less money than the french plus tickets are more expensive. And in France it was easy to get all tickets in the end.

Is football even more popular than ice hockey in Russia?

I think you are over-estimating.

Time will tell.

Plus normal people dont put in the time and effort that we do here.