FIFA warning on 2026 World Cup ticket touting

Article posted by Coliseum, May 5^th, 2025

Image: Coliseum GSVA

Tickets for the 2026 World Cup are being sold on a third-party ticket exchange – with up to £46,000 for the final – despite FIFA not putting any on the market yet.

‘sky news’ stated that the world football’s governing body has now issued a warning to the fans to be “wary” of unofficial websites purporting to already offer tickets after being asked about one platform, Vivid Seats.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup™, marketed as FIFA World Cup 26™, will be the 23^rd FIFA World Cup™, the quadrennial international men’s soccer championship contested by the national teams of the member associations of FIFA. The tournament will take place from June 11^th –July 19^th, 2026. It will be jointly hosted by 16 Cities in three North American countries. The main host country of matches is the United States while Canada and Mexico will be the auxiliary hosts. The tournament will be the first to be hosted by three nations.

Chicago (US)-base Vivid Seats Inc. is an online ticket marketplace and resale company that uses its technology platform to connect the fans of live sports and entertainment events with the ticket sellers.

‘sky news’ further stated that concerns were raised by the Premier League team Chelsea F.C. (UK) fans about their Chairman Todd Boehly being an investor and Director in Vivid while it also sells tickets overseas for the Chelsea home ground – the 40,341-capacity Stamford Bridge in London, England (UK) – matches at inflated prices.

Vivid has listings for matches throughout the World Cup for matches being played in the United States and Canada.

Even a group stage match on the second day of the tournament has regular tickets – some listed in specific rows – being sold for up to £44,112 at the 70,000-capacity SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles.

The tickets listed for the World Cup Final on July 19^th, 2026 range from £4,936 to £46,412 (Row 31, Lower Level 139) at the 82,500-capacity MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

Vivid’s website promises: “No matter what you’re looking to spend Vivid Seats has World Cup tickets to fit your budget.”

But then it says: “Vivid Seats will have World Cup tickets for sale as soon as they are available, usually many months before the actual game.”

The FIFA has cautioned the supporters.

The World Cup organizers stated, “FIFA encourages any fan wishing to purchase tickets for the FIFA World Cup 26™ to be wary of non-FIFA official ticketing websites that claim to be selling tickets already and only purchase tickets from the official and legitimate source once those are made available.”

FIFA is planning to put World Cup tickets on sale this Summer.

Ronan Evain, Executive Director of Football Supporters Europe, said the ticket listings were “worrying”.

Remarked Evain, “It’s unlikely that these tickets have been issued and the relation with the competition organizers is unclear. Companies like this either exploit the many loopholes that persist in the ticket sales policy or they get privileged access to the tickets through the competition organizers, or the associated parties. It’s the responsibility of the competition organizer to ensure that they put in place a transparent ticket distribution policy and sufficient protections such as drastic limitations on the number of times a ticket can be transferred to someone else, for example. Either they get a safe shortcut to get access to tickets at a later stage. Or they are so confident in exploiting the many loopholes that they take limited risk in selling tickets that don’t exist yet.”

Vivid Seats stated on the Chelsea ticketing controversy recently, “It is important to note that Vivid Seats does not set the base price for tickets sold on its marketplace or receive any revenue from that base price; only the seller sets and receives the base ticket price.”

That comment was issued in response to complaints by Chelsea to the Premier League about Boehly being linked to a website selling tickets beyond Britain for matches.

The Chelsea Supporters’ Trust said Vivid and Boehly were undermining efforts to combat ticket touting.

Chelsea has revealed plans to introduce digital-only tickets from next season in conjunction with Ticketmaster.

The hope is that it eventually makes it harder for people to buy up memberships and sell tickets for hiked-up prices.

In a statement, Chelsea Chief Revenue Officer Casper Stylsvig said the link-up is in part about “continuing to address the issue of ticket touts”.

On Chelsea tickets Vivid said, “Vivid Seats respectfully adheres to the laws that are in place in the United Kingdom and is not in violation of any regulations around the English Premier League (EPL) tickets.”

London (UK)-based the English Premier League (EPL) or just Premier League is the most popular football league and the most-watched sports league in the world. It is the highest level of the English Football League system. Twenty clubs are part of the league and they play a total of 38 matches in home and away match format.

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