Author: Zen, PANews
At 3:00 AM Beijing time on June 12, the highly anticipated 2026 FIFA World Cup will officially kick off in Mexico City.
This World Cup is hailed as an unprecedented mega-event, featuring 48 teams and a total of 104 matches hosted across the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Unless unforeseen circumstances arise, it is expected to be the most commercially successful World Cup in history.
Yet, just days before the opening, this World Cup is facing difficulties selling tickets. According to the Financial Times, with the opening match just days away, approximately 180,000 group stage tickets remain unsold. For a premier event long regarded as a global spectacle, this contrast is striking.
This is not because the World Cup itself has lost its global appeal; in fact, the betting industry has promoted this World Cup as the "biggest betting opportunity" in history. As of June 11, the total amount invested in event contracts on the prediction market Polymarket regarding the World Cup champion had approached $2 billion. Such massive capital inflow before the tournament's start highlights the event's immense popularity.
Therefore, the difficulty in obtaining tickets is less about the tickets themselves and more about FIFA’s ticket sales mechanism, revealing the side effects of FIFA’s aggressive commercialization experiment in its World Cup ticketing system.
FIFA's ticketing "trick": Buy tickets, first buy digital collectibles
One of the most controversial ticketing arrangements for this World Cup is FIFA’s sale of so-called "Right-To-Buy," or RTB, through the FIFA Collect platform.
Unlike traditional ticketing products, RTB is a "digital entitlement" or "digital collectible" designed around access to World Cup tickets, issued and traded via the FIFA Collect digital collectibles platform. The issued digital collectibles are essentially NFTs. The FIFA Collect platform originally operated on the Algorand blockchain and migrated in May 2025 to FIFA Blockchain, a proprietary blockchain built on Avalanche technology.
According to FIFA Collect's official explanation, holding an RTB only grants fans the opportunity to purchase tickets for a specific match during a designated window. Each RTB specifies how many tickets the holder can purchase in the future and for which match or event, but it does not include the tickets themselves.
This mechanism splits ticket purchasing into two steps: first, selling scarcity, and second, selling the actual tickets. However, when fans purchase RTBs, they often do not know the final seat section, the full ticket price, or fully assess how valuable this “priority” will be in the future.
Regarding pricing, RTBs do not have a fixed price; instead, prices vary based on the importance of the corresponding match, the number of tickets available for purchase, and market supply and demand. On the previous FIFA Collect platform, RTB prices ranged from tens to hundreds of dollars per match, and RTBs for popular matches or those offering multiple ticket entitlements sometimes sold for even higher prices on the secondary market.
According to UK sports business media SportsPro, FIFA has previously generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue from these RTB sales.
When tickets are extremely scarce and prices are still unclear, this design encouraging fans to pay upfront may make some sense. But when the official platform ultimately still has a large number of tickets unsold, RTB’s awkwardness becomes apparent—if tickets aren’t as hard to get as imagined, the rationale for spending hundreds of dollars upfront to secure purchasing rights is called into question.
It's not just expensive—it's also opaque and constantly changing.
The main competitions of this event are concentrated in the U.S. market, which is already the world’s most mature and expensive live sports entertainment market. Leagues such as the NFL, NBA, and MLB have long employed business models featuring high ticket prices, luxury suites, dynamic pricing, and secondary markets. Having entered this market, FIFA naturally aims to align World Cup pricing with these standards.
FIFA has adopted a dynamic or variable pricing model for this World Cup, meaning ticket prices can be adjusted continuously based on demand, inventory, and sales stage. While early official communications emphasized that some group stage tickets start at $60, the number of tickets at this low price point is limited. Most tickets are significantly higher than fans expected—for example, popular group stage matches often cost hundreds or even thousands of dollars, while knockout stage and final match tickets are extraordinarily expensive.
It is reported that the actual cost of tickets for this World Cup is approximately two to four times that of the previous Qatar World Cup, with prices for popular matches, the opening game, and the final reaching four to seven times higher. The issue is that the World Cup is not a regular commercial league; its audience consists not only of local high-income sports consumers but also ordinary fans from around the globe. Many fans must undertake intercontinental travel, book flights and accommodations in advance, and cover city transportation costs to support their national teams. For these fans, ticket prices represent only a portion of the total cost—but they are also the most uncontrollable part.
Even more frustrating for fans is the lack of transparency in ticket sales. European fan and consumer organizations have complained to FIFA that, early on, it did not adequately disclose how many tickets remained at each price tier or the specific seating locations. Some fans were required to pay high fees without being able to fully confirm the view or exact position of their seats. This information asymmetry has significantly intensified the feeling of being manipulated.
Currently, FIFA’s ticketing system has not only sparked commercial controversy but also come under public regulatory scrutiny. Authorities in New York State and New Jersey in the United States have launched investigations into World Cup ticketing, focusing on seat information, ticket advertising, and whether so-called artificial scarcity exists.
Official resale platform amplifies price anxiety
FIFA has launched an official resale platform specifically for this World Cup, theoretically aimed at allowing fans to buy and sell tickets in a secure environment, reducing fraud and black-market transactions. However, while this platform has improved transaction security, it has not enhanced the fan ticket-buying experience.
The European Fans’ Association and the European Consumer Organization criticized FIFA for charging fees to both buyers and sellers in its official resale platform, allowing it to continue profiting from secondary transactions after the initial ticket sale. According to the Financial Times, citing ticketing rules, sellers on FIFA’s official resale platform pay approximately 10% in service fees, while buyers incur additional charges of around 17% in handling and related fees.
In other words, if a ticket is resold through the official platform, the combined fees paid by both parties amount to nearly 27% of the face value. This allows FIFA to generate high revenue from the primary market while also continuing to collect fees from the secondary resale market.
As of now, FIFA's official channels continue to sell tens of thousands of group stage tickets. For scalpers and speculators who hoarded tickets at high prices hoping to profit from reselling at a markup, even selling at face value after deducting platform fees results in an actual loss.
Of course, the 180,000 tickets held for resale won't lead to significant empty seats at this World Cup. FIFA President Infantino stated at a pre-tournament press conference that over 6 million tickets have already been sold, with demand exceeding expectations by “ten times or more.” High-profile matches, host nation games, knockout rounds, and the final will continue to draw massive interest. As the tournament progresses, emotions rise, and team advancement becomes clearer, some of the remaining inventory may also be absorbed.
But the significance of this controversy lies in reminding people that, even though overall sales for the World Cup remain strong, this tournament has shown that fan enthusiasm does not equate to unlimited willingness to pay—there is still a boundary that ticket prices and ticketing mechanisms cannot easily cross. The World Cup’s global influence does not mean FIFA can indefinitely exploit this emotional premium.