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

Who told you this?

 

My guess was lower than 15%. Now I feel there’s a bit of hope of getting some tickets.
I wonder what time it would start if tickets go on FCFS worldwide all at once. I’ve never experienced that, since for previous World Cups I was able to secure tickets through a lottery stage.

 

I wonder what software they were using that didn't autocorrect that spelling. Unless someone deliberately switched it back.

 

“I before E, except…what was that again?”

 

Hello everyone,

I'm new here. I'm hoping to attend the World Cup again this summer. I'm writing this post as motivation for fans that still didn't buy their tickets.
I did some calculations and wanted to share my thoughts. First, there are 6.6 million tickets available in total. FIFA announced that 2 million tickets were sold during the first two phases, which leaves 4.6 million tickets remaining. For the PMA, we know FIFA allocates 8% of tickets per match, which comes out to around 530,000 tickets overall. PMA tickets were sold during Phase 3, which is important for the point I'm making. FIFA heavily advertised that the tournament is oversubscribed, but in my opinion this may not be entirely accurate. I strongly believe that the ballot was saturated with bots. Because of this, my suspicion is that FIFA intentionally held back a large number of tickets in Phase 3 and plans to release them during the summer. Why do I think this? FIFA never released the number of tickets sold in Phase 3, even though they did so after every draw in previous phases. I attended both Russia 2018 and Qatar 2022 in person, and during those tournaments FIFA was always very transparent about ticket sales in each phase. This time, they have been unusually quiet. Also, I personally don't know many people who actually won tickets in Phase 3 compared to earlier phases, especially for higher demand matches. This raises an important question which is did FIFA really sell all PMA tickets during Phase 3? I doubt it. There were likely many failed payments and unsettled transactions because of bots etc. For the sake of an example, let's assume FIFA managed to sell around 80% of PMA tickets (which I actually think is a generous estimate). That would mean about 430,000 PMA tickets were sold during Phase 3. Now let's consider general public tickets. Given the amount of bots, failed payments, and people rejecting their allocations, I find it hard to believe they sold more than 1 million tickets this way. So let's assume 1 million for simplicity. That would mean 1.43 million tickets sold in Phase 3 in total. If that was true, FIFA likely would have announced it proudly, since it would outperform both Phase 1 and Phase 2. But they didn't. Starting with 4.6 million tickets remaining before Phase 3, subtracting 1.43 million leaves us with about 3.17 million tickets. Now let's also assume FIFA did not include hospitality and sponsor tickets in the original 2 million sold announcement. I'll estimate at around 500,000 hospitality tickets and 500,000 sponsor tickets. If we subtract those as well, we are still left with around 2.17 million tickets potentially available for the summer sales.
Honestly, I suspect the number might even be higher, because hospitality and sponsor packages are very expensive and may not have sold as well as expected. On top of that, I assumed upfront that Phase 3 performed better than Phases 1 and 2, which realistically might not even be true. If it had performed that well, FIFA would likely have shared the numbers publicly. There is also a chance that hospitality and sponsor tickets were already included in the "2 million sold" figure from earlier phases. If that's the case, then the number of tickets left for the summer could be significantly higher than 2.17 million which is the amount they sold during phase 1 and phase 2 at least.
Overall, my conclusion is that we're very likely safe. I believe many Category 1, Category 2, and Category 3 tickets will become available during the summer sales, and that the current uncertainty is simply creating unnecessary panic among fans.


tl;dr
I think Fifa is manipulating the market and that we will have more then 2 - 2.5 million tickets left for phase 4.

Good luck to everyone trying to get tickets!

 

#TheyDidTheMath

In any case, I hope you're right!

 

I think the quantity that's carved out for sponsors is much higher than that, probably closer to 40%. But a lot of those get returned in the last minute sales phase and end up as regular inventory.

 

If I don't have tickets a week before I hope they are selling as I'll be in each of the 5 cities over 12 days ......and am not paying what they're going for now

 

From Brazil 2014

 

50 % Public incl PMAs , 13 % Hospitality ...

I think that 80% of the general sale tickets have been sold, along with 70% of the PMAs from the confirmed participating countries.

Starting in April, the FCFS phase will be added, plus PMAs from the final six member associations. I estimate that approximately 3.5 million tickets have been sold so far, and another 1-1.5 million will be added by the beginning of June from stadium finalizations, returns from member associations, on-location sales, sponsors, and FIFA partners.

 

FIFA)) I found this info in September, with all sales phases dates and ticket amounts. On FIFA website itself or some trustworthy (not Daily Mail or similar) media. For the moment, all sales phases dates coincided. The ticket amounts for each sales phase were approx. equal. 1mln each.

 

You'd better inform the nice Swiss man of this ASAP as he is convinced they have sold out.

 

I'm sure FIFA is overhyping the demand to an extent, but to be fair, "sold out" in this context could have been referring to the allocation for the specific sales phase in question.

 

UEFA Learning from FIFA with those CAT 1/2 Prices....

 

same as last year FYI

 

That was my guess "we've sold out! (of tickets we have allocated so far)"

 

I've always assumed this is what Infantino meant.

 

Has anyone here managed to attend a Champions League final in recent years? The lottery seems close to impossible, so I'm wondering about the secondary market.

 

Good analysis. Some of the specifics may be off, but it feels directionally correct. I tend to think Gianni is careful not to lie when discussing business (what he says when announcing peace prizes falls into another category), but that doesn't mean what he says is a whole truth. That FIFA may be counting sponsor tickets as 'sold' (and thus 'sold out') right now could well be technically accurate, according to FIFA's accounting system ('committed' might be more accurate'), but this doesn't mean that someone has actually paid money for them (which is how a normal person might understand the word 'sold'). Sponsor returns, hospitality conversions -- these always happen, and the number of matches and stadium sizes are much larger this time around. As for the bot hypothesis in re: phase 3 sales: not sure I buy it, but it'd be awesome if your hunch is correct. Nice work, @Friendlydude, thanks for sharing it here.

 

That there will be tickets available in FCFS, no doubt. I think there is no longer such a thing as Cat 3 tickets, which is going the same way Category 4 went, except for low-demand games which FIFA - and we - know what they are. Since FIFA can dynamically rearrange seating, every future ticket sale for popular games will be Cat 1 and 2 until a couple weeks before each game, once the WC is fully publicized. Remember that for most US residents, which are affluent ones, they still have no idea this event is taking place. So here's my take:
* expect a trickle of all Cats for popular games which I think will be mostly new seats available once the stadium final configuration is fully defined (so best chances will be single seats)
* expect a decent amount of Cat 3 tickets for the West Coast games (except when US or Canada plays), as they all are in the top 25 of least-interesting games to attend, and the other 10 or so low-demand games sprinkled around the US.
* except only Cat 1 and Cat 2 potentially at a higher price than ever for everything else including games in Canada and Mexico
• ... and then there's M4, USA - PAR in LA. For that one, I'm still not sure what is happening. I'm just guessing that FIFA put the stakes very high as bait to the many "famous" people, from the movie industry to tech to influencers. It's possible ticket prices will drop dramatically, meaning FIFA will switch to a Cat 4-type of pricing ($560) for Cat 3 and even Cat 2 seating. At this point FIFA doesn't care about pissing off people who will pay vastly more than the guy sitting next to them, mostly because that guy who overpaid is not a real fan (or they would have known not to buy like we do). The only thing I know is that right now, including the 25% to 30% fee on resale platforms, ALL Cat 1 to Cat 3 tickets are being resold at a loss, for ex. on StubHub $2,487 for Cat 1 ticket sold by FIFA at $2,735.

 

The pricing of M4 might just be the biggest fumble from FIFA across their entire pricing strategy for this tournament

 

I still don't buy the tickets will get cheaper idea. Except for the dregs of the matches, what matches would not sell at the last current prices? Maybe they do 1 more lottery, but usually at this stage its a FCFS. If the match is in demand, touts will have the advantage and the prices on the secondary market will show it.

Like what matches are going below FIFA prices on the secondary market right now?

 

It is going to be the matches nobody wants to go to in cities people do not care about that may go down in price.

 

Or on day of the match there will be some people saying screw it I will take the loss. And that may happen for more alluring matches but not really expecting it for any of the teams expected to make a run in this thing.

 

You may see some deals at the very last minute, especially if the weather is poor. That happens a lot with concerts and baseball games, for example. Though its usually the run-of-the-mill bands and games where you see this occur, not for the hottest shows.