Going to North America '26: tickets, accommodations, etc. (non-politics)

Fifa world cup, olympics etc arent necessarily businesses, though. these are biggest sporting events meant to bring most fans together and allow world class athletes to put on a show on a global scale.

 

In Australia probably because of isolation, small population and the concept of fairness there isn't this profit driven ticket resale industry that there seems to be in the US. Yes there is a resale industry here but people aren't prepared to get hustled over. In any case we have big stadiums and venues for the big events we host like F1 Grand Prix, Australian Open tennis, Ashes cricket, mega concerts etc. Plenty of tickets to go around most of the time if you get in early. Taylor Swift played 3 sell out nights at the MCG in front of around 100k each night a few years ago. The vast majority of fans got tickets. Those that didn't like several of my daughters friends were not paying x4 times the face value on resale.

 

Isolation helps. Bali is great value due to being in the same region. Qatar ticket prices were great value because of it's relative isolation too. Though I think they found they could recoup a lot of that by hiking the housing prices up. Food was great value though in Qatar

 

Timing of the games suggests maximum profit for tv revenue. They want the European audience. I agree though it's a beautiful sporting event.

 

Qatar ticket prices were slightly more expensive than Russia, like less than 10% more, like Russia was pretty much the same increase over Brazil, which was pretty much the same increase over South Africa, which was about the same increase over Germany, and so on going back over time. This was not some Qatar was cheap because it was Qatar thing. This was FIFA basically raising prices with general inflation increases until this time where they raised ticket prices by 400% and more all of a sudden.

 

Independence from Britain - sorry to be pedantic

 

Exactly. FIFA is a nonprofit organization, I think the IOC is too. They put on international events where most of their revenue comes from sponsors and TV broadcasts. Exploiting the most dedicated fans with dynamic ticket prices, 30% fees on resale, and RTB is a new direction.

 

Are you able to put for resale the tickets transferred to you? I'm guessing no.

 

Wait until you see Met Life.

 

I got my visa draw result as successful yesterday, on my birthday as well .

 

5 first half penalties in 7 games in 2022 when struggling at 0-0.
Will they get 6 in 8 games this time?

 

is there anything worth buying anymore? I thought all Mexico, Colombia, US, Argentina TSTs, games etc stopped trickling.

 

Who will get the boosts / nerfs this world cup?

Pks
Easy draw
Easy side of the ko rounds
Friendly ref
Red cards
Phantom free kicks
Hand balls in the box
Best player seizures
Best player has his back broken
Best player doesn't show up due to kidnapping threats
Best player home invasion the night before
Intrasquad fighting
Gk controversy
Political uprising at home

Lmao it's such a great soap opera

I honestly feel the pricing is just to see what people will pay for non hospitality tickets. Like you have an item that is pretty rare... Wouldn't you want to know it's value on the open market? The World Cup in the USA... they get to see what happens when you have a huge relatively well off (on average) population fighting with hard core fans for tickets... It probably hasn't been done since Germany 06. But this is the first time with dynamic pricing. I mean I wonder myself what would I do in their situation. Give rare items to people who loved them and cherished them... Or to the highest bidder. Alright I need to stop texting lmao it's been fun. Have fun this summer.

 

The biggest teams (most of which are the seeded ones) will of course be spread around in different groups/regions. That’s baked into the schedule. And this time, FIFA allowed themselves flexibility within each group to pick cities/stadiums and kickoff times after the draw for each matchday.

But that’s all different than suggesting that FIFA will rig the draw to place certain teams in certain cities (or that they did so in 2014/2018??). If so, what was the deal with those balls they drew out of glass bowls on TV?

FIFA could definitely decide before the draw to manually assign the seeded teams to groups. But there’s no recent precedent for that and it wouldn’t be without controversy.

It’s ultimately FIFA’s tournament and no one (local rights TV holders, US Soccer, other federations) will call the shots. The IOC listens to NBC because they pay significantly more than any other media rights holders.

I don’t think FIFA is terribly concerned about ticket sales this time (just look at the starting prices), so they really will be fine putting any team in any group. No need to worry about where the ethnic Germans, Italians, or Koreans are concentrated.

 

Qatar food sucked so hard and I will fight anyone on that.

 

The best meals I had in Qatar was Jollibee and some fire Kebabs by the old airport (we called it Afghanistan cause it looked like that lol) that were 2.5 USD each, they had so much demand they raised it to 3 USD a couple days later!!!

 

Understood. Of course, ticket prices in the bid book are not binding. I am sure there is a disclaimer or footnote in there that says “prices are subject to change” or whatever. But I would still like to see the media make Infantino answer the question of why ticket prices now are up 5x or more over the bid book prices.

By the way, the losing Morocco bid had slightly lower ticket prices than the United North American 2026 winning bid. For example, the winning North American bid had a Category 1 Final ticket at $1,550 while with the Moroccan bid would have that same ticket at $1,365. (See page 174 of 193.)

https://digitalhub.fifa.com/m/31939d837a8ad761/original/weegrtyecqg3hjw8hmmr-pdf.pdf

 

The stadium food was so trash lol the shawarma spot I found around my apartment was incredible. I hope the people there are doing well.

 

Got the email yesterday, heading in to buy tickets (if any are left) in 12 hours. Question: I've seem some people say click on the link in the email. Others say, that doesn't always work, go to https://fifa-fwc26-us.tickets.fifa.com/ instead. Which is correct?

 

Man, there is (was?) a Yemeni restaurant right in front of the beach at the Souq Al-Wakrah, which is the beach area close to the clusters, where we stayed (an easy shuttle bus ride). That Yemeni food was so good and that place was always packed, with a nice view of the beach and Persian Gulf. That Souq Al-Wakrah beach area was the nicest we saw in Qatar, a much nicer experience than Souq Waqif.

Does anyone know of any Yemeni restaurants in any of the USA host cities? We looked where we live and there are none. The spouse and I would love to try Yemeni food again. New York/New Jersey must have one or more?

 

You will get another email a couple hours before the sale. Use the link there. It should take you to a waiting room

 

is this a shit post? stadium food sucked but they had amazing restaurants.

 

LA and downtown San Francisco have a ton of yemeni places.

 

They are price anchoring, the open market will ultimately determine the price. Welcome to capitalism. Much easier to lower prices later and call it a deal. Just be patient, many group matches will be easily for much less than their current face value.

I only see 1 non-host match that I am 99+% confident will go above it’s current face value.

As for USA resale culture: When I was an international socio (i.e. club member) of River Plate while living in Buenos Aires, tickets were sold only a few days in advance. So there was naturally much less buying/selling/touting. You only bought tickets if you intended to go, and you needed a membership card to enter the stadium. It’s similar in some parts of Europe. Very different to USA culture where many tickets are purchased as part of an upfront season package several months in advance. Even if you attend 50-75% of the matches, that still leave several thousand tickets on the resale market for every match.

 

When I contacted FIFA about the same issue, they shared a link to accept the transfer. However, when I opened it, it showed that I was successful in the draw — which is not the case. This indicates that only applicants who were actually successful in the draw are currently able to transfer or receive tickets. So, even though FIFA offered the transfer option to all applicants in the presale draw, they’re clearly aware of this limitation. They really need to sort it out.