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

Been pretty lucky over the years with ticketing for tournaments that I’ve applied for. Applied for 2 x r16 games for euro 2020 and got them but covid got all of us in the end….4 country euro holiday had to be cancelled as well unfortunately. For Qatar I got tickets I wanted via fcfs, lottery, our football federation and resale portal. 21 in total. A lot of time and effort but so worth it. Last years euros I applied for r16 and q/f cat 3 games in initial lottery but missed out. Then in 2nd lottery applied for similar games all cat 1’s and was successful. Didn’t really expect it. Didn’t end up going to Germany as it would have already added plenty to our 6 week family European (Paris, Barcelona, Greece) trip. Wife said save your money for another big WC trip next year. Starting to get excited about the WC and very curious how FIFA will do the ticketing. Money will be their overiding factor. I’ll definitely be buying up in the initial pre draw stage as insurance then after the draw buying and re-selling etc to suit our itinerary. I’m not too fussed about what games I end up with. Some of the best games I saw in Qatar were ‘average’ on paper but ended up being fantastic, Serbia v Cameroon, Morocco v Belgium, Uruguay v Ghana come to mind.

 

Well I don't think its right that FIFA allow individuals to do 1,000 applications.

 

I am not sure where probability is higher, purely mathematically of course since that is the only thing that counts
1.Credit Card required. Touts do million, we do 20,30 or 50, and people with less knowledge do 1-5
2. Credit Card not required. Touts do million, we do 50-1000 and people with less knowledge do 1-20

In the past I thought option 1 wins, meanwhile my feeling goes toward option 2 wins

EDIT: I excluded semi-professional options some fans might use, such as disposable or generated credit card numbers. In such a case options 1 clearly wins, but IMHO that's more tout way than fan way and only very few fans will use it.

 

It should be noted that with the ticket prices for the upcoming World Cup, the credit card limit for a very successful ticket allocation is quickly exceeded. This could make the entire application worthless in the end.

 

I think he's mixed general and hospitality sales together.
I think there will be individual tickets available in the first phase. Otherwise, tickets for many matches will be difficult to sell after the draw.

 

No of course it isn't, but at the same time, FIFA has repeatedly shown that they don't care. They haven't taken anti-tout measures at WCs that exist in countries that prohibit them... why would they start with one that embraces it lol.

 

I feel pretty confident that individual tickets will for sure be available in phase 1. However I could totally see certain matchups not being available post draw.

 

This thread is going to be valuable for people wanting to do a ticket exchange.

 

very possible. host games (at least usa and mexico) and the final might be (officially or unofficially) unavailable in the draw. those games are ideal for dynamic pricing, for the rest they will certainly have their own algorythm. this is about millions, no way they miss on those.

 

Perhaps view it from another angle? Individuals' greed drives abuse of lottery systems, if given the opportunity. And by individuals, I mean both buyers and sellers.

In one end, we have buyers unsatisfied with purchasing enough tickets: they will buy additional ones to *trade* them. That always helps offset total WC expenses.
The big difference between them and ticket touts is the latter are uninterested in attending WC matches.
I mean: someone enters a myriad applications, will they simply void unneeded successful ones, or trade them for top-value tickets? Their logic is that if FIFA is sticking it to me, then I might as well stick it to fellow buyers before they stick it to me.

Meanwhile, sellers inflate prices by restricting ticket pool access. That is how resellers became indirect partners in FIFA's business model: FIFA lets resellers operate to create a buyer panic, then buyers consider right-to-buy chips / hospitality tickets in fear of being fleeced by resellers.

And there is no incentive for change: both FIFA and confederation execs get free WC tickets for their family and friends. They also control "federation-allocated" WC tickets, which they have *exchanged* for large figures/benefits in the past (see 2014 WC witch-hunt in 2017, after Conmebol execs got extradited to USA in 2015).

WC players never get free tickets, too.

You can choose to learn how to automate email account creation. And I do not mean creating a thousand email aliases for the same Gmail account, as ticket sellers may decide blocking aliases for 2026 WC.

 

there is zero greed in doing your best to get the tickets you need

the system was always the same, place as many applications as you can in the random draw phase and then invest as much time as you can in FCFS phase

 

Agree 100%

but “Don’t underestimate the other guys greed”

 

I am not going for resell, I am just trying to get tickets to the games I want. 23.5 million applications for matches in Qatar. I got in an argument on the first page of this thread about this. We settled on 52 million applications. I still that that is comically low but whatever. Maybe that is the amount of applications for 'standard' matches... i.e. apps with only USA/Mexico/Semis/Final. I still think its low.

We have 104 matches, average stadium size is 65k. Lets say 15k are for sponsors, hospitality, RTB and FIFA or whatever. That is roughly only 5.1 million tickets left for the lotteries. Add that FIFA employs an 'all or nothing' likelihood for applications and successful application will each be worth multiple tickets. Lets say the average is 4 games and 4 tickets each, that is 16 tickets going to each successful application. That equals 318,750 total successful applications.

If you believe in the 52 million number of applicants, that would equate to a 0.61% success rate. I personally believe there will be over 100 million applications; and if that's the case my 1000 applications should net me just 1 success.

 

One person being allowed to do 1,000 applications is 100% greed.

 

you are as wrong as you can be, but we discussed it over and over so here one last time, for the new members reading:
if probability is very low as it is with champions league final or world cup final, then you should do as many as you can. no reason not to. if you are applying for the world cup and go several hundred profiles, you may incude the final in every single one, and do the rest by instinct or experience.
I was never able to place so many since I am always careful to have only one per combo IP+device+browser, but if you have a group of friends traveling to the same event (we were 12 in our best times) you can certainly do a lot.

it is greed if you apply for all possible tickets and take them all to make profit our of it, as touts do. If you apply for selected games for yourself plus friends to get in then it is definitely not, and since the payment is not done in advance any more you take only tickets you or your friends need. also many tickets are exchanged here and elsewhere, that simple! last year in germany a lot of tickets were swapped in and around the stadiums as well, having tickets in the app made it even easier than before.

p.s. noone is allowed to do that, FIFA/ UEFA have their ticketing terms and conditions and they do check it a bit and exclude obvious multiple applications, but they do not really care and they are definitely not after the fans when doing those checks, so you can definitely do it if you have time and do it smart.

 

for every world cup we get a lot of new members here, most of them are either big event unexperienced, often clueless and stick-to-rules type of fans, at least when it comes to world cup ticketing process. some of them learn fast, some of them need some time and surprisingly many keep on moaning how FIFA sucks and how they would love to go but, because of the dark side force, can't get stupid tickets, instead of doing something, and by that I certainly do not mean going hospitality, stubhub or fifa collect.
clearly not everyone can invest that much energy and time as some of us did for ages, but nothing falls from the sky, apart from rain and snow (or glowing meteorits if your into flash gordon)

 

Absolutely. Adding on, I remember people asking if I was scared of FIFA cancelling all of my applications. No lol, if they cancel mine that means that they got all the touts too! That would be awesome! I assume all the World Cup veterans here have quite a few friends who will come out out of the woodwork asking how to get tickets. If I get extras, thats where mine will go.

 

I live in LA and every single person I know will want tickets. Real fans of the game. Mostly people who could never afford to travel for a World Cup game. I already have a large list to fill just for family.

 

As I expected. Is why we need credit cards and the charge block (like UEFA for the CL final did where they charge the card).
We don't need millions of applications being inflated by the time-wasters.

 

I don't mind that, but I just don't think it will happen. FIFA has very little desire or reason to go back to a method that was more work for them. What we have is likely what we are going to get.

 

Why do you think UEFA went back requiring credit cards? just asking

 

No idea. I don't follow UEFA so I had no idea that they had ever gone away from it. UEFA in general has an easier go at processing however. I assume a European credit card being used in Switzerland isn't that much a red flag as what FIFA has to deal with.

 

they didn‘t really go back to where they were until 2018, you still had to pay after the allocation and you could use any card.
they did require a card at the time of application. but for whatever reason that card was not automatically charged in case of success (even though they said it would be). no clue why it was like that, we can only guess!

 

In 2018, the credit card that was initially charged was the one specified in the application (October 26th), and then the emails arrived on October 30th. By then, you already knew from the credit card charges whether you had been successful. However, there were also emails where you were successful, but there were problems with the card being charged (due to the credit card limit). You then had the option to pay – with two deadlines.

 

I was actually talking about UEFA, until 2018 they never gave you second chance to pay. if you were successful and your card got declined they simply cancelled your application

on the other hand FIFA offered that chance twice, once as you said 2018, but 2010 as well. 2010 you could even pay per wire transfer.
there was actually delayed payment option in 2014 as well, but only for locals who had an option to pay by using boleto payment system in case of successful allocation. however, that was not second chance to pay, they had to select it as default payment option when applying.