With 36 days remaining until the World Cup kicks off across the United States, Mexico, and Canada, soccer fans are expressing their outrage at FIFA's ongoing strategy of slowly releasing tickets for the tournament. The governing body is set to release another limited batch of tickets for multiple matches on Thursday, despite having previously announced sell-outs and 'last chances' to purchase.
FIFA maintains that this staggered release is a response to high demand. However, a recent poll from Seton Hall University indicates that interest in purchasing tickets has actually declined over the past six months. Among self-identified soccer fans, interest dropped from 40% in October to 30% in April. Self-described sports fans saw a decline from 21% to 16%, while 'avid sports fans' fell from 33% to 25%.
The reasons for this falling demand are not entirely clear, but fans point to a difficult purchasing process and exorbitantly high prices for group stage matches as major deterrents. The frustration was evident in comments on FIFA's social media announcement of the new ticket release. One user wrote, 'Having trouble selling them because your greedy a**es priced too many fans out?' Another commented, 'LOL we know you’re withholding a ton of inventory to call it “limited”. Will get tickets a week out when they’re 75% off. You overestimated the market.'
Another angry fan stated, 'Maybe if you priced the tickets at a reasonable price you would’ve sold out by now instead of doing this dumb ass rollout. Stop pricing out real fans.' One fan remarked, 'I’m so tired of this. Wait all day only to find single tickets that cost more than my mortgage payment.' Another comment read, 'Release of tickets for the fans who actually care has been a disaster.' A user advised, 'I encourage all of you to just wait it out at this point. They're desperate, as are the scalpers who bought up a majority of tickets.'
This latest batch of tickets comes on the heels of a report from The Athletic revealing that the United States men's national team's home opener in Los Angeles is significantly under-sold. A document from April 10 showed that only 40,934 tickets for United States vs. Paraguay had been sold, far below SoFi Stadium's capacity of 69,650. Category 1 tickets for that match are priced at $2,730, Category 2 at $1,940, and upper-bowl Category 3 tickets at $1,120. There is no indication that these prices will be reduced.
Compounding the issue, other matches at the same venue are out-selling the USMNT's opener, including Iran vs. New Zealand, which had nearly 10,000 more tickets sold at the time of the report.
