This summer’s World Cup was supposed to be the triumphant return of the planet’s favorite sport to America. But as the U.S. men’s national team prepares to host the tournament for the first time since 1994, its opening game has even hardcore fans feeling left out.
The first match, against Paraguay on June 12 in Los Angeles, should have been a sold-out celebration. Instead, soaring ticket prices have left U.S. fans irate and potentially thousands of seats six weeks before the tournament begins.
When Nick Rosato, who has followed the U.S. team closely since the 2002 World Cup, made his latest attempt to obtain tickets this past week, his cheapest option was a single seat in an upper-corner section for $1,120. A better seat would set him back more than $4,000. Those weren’t resale-site prices, they were the numbers set by FIFA itself.
“We’re not talking about the knockout round,” said Rosato, a software engineer in central Massachusetts. “We’re talking about a group-stage game. That’s absolutely bonkers.”
For now, Rosato is holding off—and he isn’t alone. This week, FIFA’s website showed seats available for the U.S. opener in at least a few dozen sections of the 70,000-seat stadium.
The slow uptake is especially jarring considering the surge in soccer’s popularity since the last U.S.-based World Cup more than three decades ago. But despite their increased interest in the team, fans have been left disillusioned by a ticket process that they call opaque and overpriced. FIFA never posted a full menu of what tickets would actually cost for the tournament. Instead, it has released batches of tickets on its website at different moments, with prices varying by game and over time.
And the U.S. opener has some of the most expensive tickets in the entire tournament. Among the few matches that rank above it are the July 19 final, where prices have ranged from $4,185 to $10,990, and the third-place game, where lower-bowl corner seats were priced at $9,660 this week.
U.S. fan Andrew Weinfeld entered FIFA’s World Cup ticket lottery last year, and in November received an email congratulating him for being selected. But the ticket instructions read like a speakeasy invite: They included a date and time to log in to FIFA’s site, but few other details.
On the appointed day, Weinfeld locked himself in his office and logged on. He saw U.S. vs. Paraguay tickets and worried they would soon be gone. So Weinfeld, a healthcare executive who lives outside Orlando, snapped up three at $1,940 apiece.
“Extortion’s a strong word,” Weinfeld said of FIFA. “But in essence, I think that’s the spirit of what they’re doing.”
FIFA didn’t respond to several requests for comment about the U.S. opener. But the organization has said it is using demand-driven dynamic pricing to maximize World Cup revenue, which FIFA officials argue is crucial to its nonprofit mission of supporting soccer federations around the world. By FIFA’s own projections, this World Cup is expected to generate more than $10 billion.
Not all U.S. games are priced as high as the opener, however. Tickets to the U.S.-Australia game June 19 in Seattle cost Weinfeld $470 apiece.
Still, U.S. supporters aren’t the only ones feeling priced out. In response to a global backlash in recent months, FIFA agreed to release a portion of $60 tickets to the 48 national soccer federations whose teams are in the World Cup. The U.S. Soccer Federation is being allocated about 500 of those tickets per U.S. game, a federation spokeswoman said. It held a lottery for the tickets among its three main supporters’ groups—the largest of which, the American Outlaws, has about 25,000 members.
Some U.S. fans who’ve been frozen out are already resorting to Plan B, said Whitney Zaleski, the Outlaws’ operations director. Instead of making plans to attend the World Cup, they are buying tickets to a U.S. friendly against Germany on June 6 in Chicago, on a resale site for less than $100.
“We’ve had some of our members jokingly say they’re going to tell their kid that’s the World Cup,” Zaleski said, “because that’s the only thing they can afford.”