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

I think tickets for a lot of matches will drop significantly - particularly mid-week matches with early start times featuring non-premium teams. I wouldn't be surprised to see several of these matches go for <$50.

But I'd be surprised to see the Final ever under $5K after including fees. Teams won't matter.

The college football final went for $3K last month in similar capacity stadium - and there is zero international interest nor even a lot of American outside the two unfanbases.

 

In Qatar I remember some people were literally giving out tickets for Cameroon vs Serbia, probably the most entertaining game in the group stage as a neutral, whereas some of the incredibly hot tickets like Spain vs Germany, Portugal vs Uruguay and USA vs England were snoozefests. I remember I didn't go to CAM-SRB cus mexico had just lost to Argentina and I was very sad but I should've forced myself to go!

 

My son's PMA application was declined, payment couldn't be processed. Some sort of card issue apparently. His card is a debit card not a credit card but has sufficient funds in it to cover payment. Will check it out with the bank today. Fifa email said they'll try again shortly and then 'may' offer an alternate way to make payment whatever that means. This, whilst touts with hundreds of accounts game the system.

 

The thing with college football is that those two fanbases are massive, devoted and all have relatively easy access to the stadium. The same thing can’t be said about the WC unless USA or to an extent, Canada and Mexico make it.

Say hypothetically France makes it to the finals. Massive population of devoted fans, but how many are actually in the U.S. already or willing to fly to NYC for it? Meanwhile, the Miami Hurricanes fans had to travel to…Miami.

 

It seems odd, I applied for 7 games. All 7 games application were unsuccessful. I have yet to receive a rejection email.

 

I don’t think cat 3 final goes under FV. But cat 1 and 2 will be very hard to move on the resale market. Touts looking to resell them will have no choice but to drop prices significantly in the coming months. Not below FV but perhaps close to it.

 

I really appreciate some of the recent comments about where get-in prices could settle from fans who seem very knowledgable- while I understand why many want to avoid guessing on the topic, I wish there had been more opinions out there about where things could settle closer to game day (and any discussion on this topic on Reddit quickly devolves). I have a bigger picture thought/question on this:

I'm sure many of us watch ticket prices and secondary markets closely for various sporting events. I've never seen a situation make less sense- every spidey sense is still telling me this is a massive bubble, whether from FIFA manipulating inventory, lying about total applications, etc. Even if this will clearly be an historically popular event, it still doesn't jive with what we've all experienced with past World Cups, NFL seasons, and other major sporting events- much less at a time when its harder for some to travel to the USA. But this being a bubble doesn't square at all with 500m total applications, or the overwhelming number of fans on BigSoccer and Reddit who continue to get shut out of lotteries despite inflated face values.

If the applicaton number hack meant that there were indeed 18M or so people applying for those 500M requests- on the one hand this would mean that almost every match must be oversubscribed (the maximum realistic number of applications for even the highest profile match is way less than 18M people x max 4 tickets per app). But it also means 28 ticket requests per application, which doesn't make much sense given how many of us regular fans applied for 1-10 total tickets this time around.

There is one theory that could somewhat explain most of this, and it's that 95% of the tickets ended up with scalpers/touts who spammed dozens or even hundreds of applications with the max 40 tickets. That could be a really good thing for us, since it means a massive bubble will burst and everyone who bought with the idea of reselling will take a major loss (while FIFA makes out like bandits of course). I had rejected this theory early in the process because I know from purchasing secondary market to a few major events like Super Bowl and NBA Finals how precise and knowledgable American brokers have become. They know how to network and collect most of the available tickets from sponsors, players/families, etc., how to price the market, and will even eat late inventory now if necessary to attempt to train fans not to wait for last minute bargains. Now obviously international touts will not have the same knowledge of the American secondary market and may overestimate demand en masse. So would normal fans who have snapped up extra tickets with the idea of trading or resellling (which is definitely happening but is unlikely to be a big enough market share to cause a bubble alone).

Sorry for the long post, but is this essentially what others think is happening? Are there other reasons you are expecting prices to plummet closer to game day?

 

I spoke to them today, they said it would work, but could not guarantee that i would get a virtual card.. so i did not apply

 

Maybe is just me being hopefull but i do think prices will come down, not from the professional tout that does world cup, after NBA, NFL, concerts etc… but im sure some regular folks out there bought tickets and when they saw those prices they just could not help themselves .. when they dont sell and game is getting closer they cant afford to lose that $$

 

Are tickets from RSD transferable yet ? Or do we have to wait until April ?

 

https://www.freemalaysiatoday.com/c...-ticket-prices-skyrocket-on-fifa-re-sale-site

 

I think that prices are about right on average. If you look at recent past World Cups the prices were never the FIFA list price. Very few people got lucky in the lottery / FCFS. Most people paid touts, Viagogo, TicketMaster double and more FIFA's list price. Argentina matches were always $1k + and Saudi v Cape Verde type matches you couldn't give away and were filled with Qatari construction workers, Russian school children, or municipal staff in Brazil (or left empty).

I have been to four World Cups and always factor in that I will have to pay more than double list price for many games to get the matches I want to see.

What I don't understand are the $2000+ for any Mexican match. I originally planned to go to M53 but pulled the pin after prices were just ridiculous.

Jordan v Algeria and Saudi v Cabo Verde will move below $100 a ticket. But any top ten team match will remain strong, as well as matches featuring host countries.

There's my experience for what it's worth, and that is why these tournaments take so much planning. You need time to be able to pivot out out of M53, and into a more realistically priced match that fits your itinerary. All this assumes you are traveling from overseas, not a local looking for match tickets in your city.

 

It's a great discussion topic. I've been going back and forth on it a lot recently myself.

On the one hand, I do think the demand is unprecedented and there are certain elements of the domestic market that support the high prices, at least for certain matches.

On the other hand, the "spidey sense" for lack of a better word does feel off, like you noted. Recent AI advancements have also gotten us to a point where any amateur wannabe scalper can easily deploy an army of bots and overwhelm any lottery system (as we saw earlier this week with the bank sales).

 

Yeah I also spoke to someone on the phone and they said the same thing, no guarantee of getting a virtual card. So also did not pursue.

 

I think a very, very large number of people put it in 10+ apps for 40 tickets. Heck, maybe make that 50+ apps.

If you had the time and the patience, it wasn't really that hard to do.

 

Great post... I also agree the demand/interest in this world cup is enormous but it's hard to imagine tickets being this difficult to get at these high prices without some of that artificially driven by professional resellers and naive people believing it will always be easy to sell for a profit if they can't go. I don't know if a bubble will happen but it certainly wouldn't surprise me, especially when you add in the number if international people who get scared off by high travel/hotel prices, by challenging visa applications or just the perceived political and safety issues. (Definitely not trying to start any political commentary, only that there are likely some people who are dissuaded from coming for various reasons).
That being said, there's a reason why the ticket prices in Metro areas like NY and LA are so high. Those markets are so big and have such large fan bases, that it can support it. So I'm not sure I see games like brazil v Morocco crashing. I also don't see the prices moving much higher though.
It will be really interesting when seats are assigned and people can shop for tickets by seat... I think people will panic when their tickets aren't selling and they aren't even in the city to go themselves and will drop prices. A friend of mine has season tickets for the Rams and was out of town opening day this year... Nobody was buying his ticket and he had to keep dropping and dropping his price and ended up selling it a few hours before the game for half what he paid. Never would have expected such low interest. I think that's going to happen in quite a few games

 

I have no idea, I come here for information!

 

@marianelah sorry if I missed it but curious on what your ticket basket is?

 

Saw this https://seatsearch.co/ on a Reddit thread. Apologies if tagged here before but someone has put together a ticket version of Skyscanner that monitors the price of tickets. Doesn't do Marketplace - not sure if they've got that planned.

Pretty useful resource to play around with. I did and it ended with me checking the ticket price for Belgium vs Iran and finding Cat 1 tickets on Marketplace much cheaper. FOMO got the better of me along with the need to plan flights etc.

 

Doesn't look like it can be trusted. Shows lowest price ticket for M8 on StubHub as $472 but when you go to StubHub you can find tickets at $438. Checked for another game (M81), same story. It seems the cheapest tickets they're showing are always GameTime - which I'm not familiar with and don't know if it can be trusted - and I'm sure they get a cut of the sale. So no, I wouldn't use that tool...

 

Wonder if it's a case of their feeds not pulling the most up to date prices? I'm not familiar with GameTime either but presumed it was just another one of the reseller sites in US.

 

The World Cup Final is the World Cup Final. Realistically there are only 15 opportunities that people will get to attend one. Unless they're lucky enough to be taken as a kid or have an unusually long active lifespan. People will want to be there irrespective of who the finalists are. Obviously the demand will be greater for Brazil v Argentina than other possible combinations. There are huge numbers of people for whom $10k for a pair of World Cup Final tickets is peanuts. It isn't fans of the competing nations that will set the floor price. New York is one of the most connected cities in the World and a much more desirable place to visit than Qatar.

The best chance for cheaper tickets is buying them in the run up to kick off. That means being prepared to walk away and watch in a bar.

The floor price will be cheaper in 2030 but if one or two big European nations make the final it will be very expensive also. I think average ticket prices for early rounds will be lower.

 

Your first paragraph I 100% disagree with.
I have been to three World Cup finals, all through ballots (we had a wonderful thing called a TST7).
Most people on here ( the base of World Cup support) DONT buy them from touts.
The ‘most’ people you refer to must have been to a different World Cup than me (I have been to five).
I am furious that people are trying to normalise rampant exploitation of fans,

 

I entered the 2022 WC ticket game really late, and scored 12 desirable games directly through the FCFS... The only game I had to buy on second market was ARG-MEX, and I paid 850 for a CAT1....
Now it is 700 a CAT 1 FV to watch Portugal-Uzbekistan... and you may end up behind the goal (I know... this is subjective). There is no way that the NRG Stradium will fill up with this price, in my opinion even with CR7 on pitch. there are almost 2 times the number of games, with bigger stadiums, yet some of us did not score a single slot on any phase or game allocated.

To me, the difference is the fact that FIFA decided to play their part on the Resale Market. On previous tournaments, where the prices remain the same on every stage, they really had no incentive for the tickets to roll through their platform, where you can only place them at FV. It was more of a tool to discard tickets you bought maybe previous to the schedule draw, or if you plans changed.

Now they have every incentive to keep the market rolling. They are making more money out of an Argentina Ticket CAT3 at 1k through the second market than what they made at FV. So yes, they are fueling the FOMO with no clarity whatsoever, (....are the prices for the next phase going to go up? are there enough tickets? bla bla). And the tournament gets closer and planning a trip from abroad takes time and money, so a lot of people will decide to secure their tickets and pay crazy prices.

Anyhow, every person should asses their situation according to the games they are looking for. To me Spain, Portugal, France will go down. Argentina, Mex USA, CAN, Brazil, Colombia, will remain the same with particular exception as the 1st game for Arg in Kansas, to me it will go down.

#ThoughtsThatNobodyAskedFor

 

I've been to 4 world cups (though admittedly twice that was only 2 games each) and have never paid more than face value and always bought through FIFA. For 2014 and 2022 that meant a lot of time scouring the resale opportunities but fortunately, FIFA never allowed price hiking. It's still very upsetting to me that FIFA set the initial prices so high. I would prefer the resale was also fixed like past world cups but I could tolerate operating like NFL and other sports do now where Ticketmaster sells the primary ticket at face value then gives you an opportunity to resell at whatever value you want. I know that's ugly for most countries but it is unfortunately, normalized here. But Infantino is lying/wrong when he says their 'dynamic' price gouging from the beginning is normalized in the USA. It's not. Face value for USA sporting events and concerts matches FIFA pricing from past world cups. It's only the resale market that gets inflated.