One week out from the World Cup, ticket prices are still the single biggest topic of conversation.
Fans who are still hoping to attend the tournament are waiting for ticket prices to fall. FIFA hasn’t started mass-dropping prices on its official site yet, but some close observers of the market believe the global governing body is finding other ways to offload tickets.
It’s hard to know exactly how many tickets FIFA has sold or distributed, and the governing body has not released information about ticket sales. FIFA did not respond to a question from Front Office Sports about how many tickets are already accounted for. The lack of transparency creates a sense of scarcity in the market—exactly what FIFA is going for, experts say.
Unlike other sporting events and concerts in the U.S., FIFA has been adding and taking away inventory in the buildup to the World Cup. About a week ago, FIFA had about 40,000 face value tickets available on its official platform. That number then shot up to about 115,000 before quickly falling to about 20,000, and is now sitting around 30,000 available after a Wednesday bump, according to the ticket tracking website TicketData.
What happened to those roughly 85,000 tickets removed from the platform in the past week? How many tickets is FIFA not listing? And how is FIFA going to sell the 30,000 or so that are still listed?
