The joy in Albania knew hardly any bounds. Images of spontaneous celebrations on the streets of Tirana suggest as much, showing Albanian fans celebrating on the streets after their national team’s 1-0 victory in the World Cup Qualifiers against Serbia, a country they already despise. Albania is now in Group K behind England in second place and could, through the playoffs, actually secure the ticket to the World Cup. Will Albanian fans then increasingly inquire how they might manage to obtain a ticket for a match of their team at the tournament in Mexico, Canada, and the United States? It won’t be easy, and it will be expensive in any case.
A first round has now taken place. For this, all interested parties first had to obtain a Visa card. Payments on FIFA’s site are possible only for customers of this premium sponsor. More than 4.5 million people from nearly every corner of the world had registered for the ticket lottery, even though it is far from clear yet who will actually be on the field. The draw will take place only on December 5. The participants in the ticket lottery did not know in advance how expensive the tickets would become. Only two prices were known. The cheapest tickets are said to cost 60 US dollars. They are available only for group matches without involvement of the host nations. And the price for the most expensive Final ticket was also disclosed: 6,730 US dollars.
Since the first tickets have been issued, it is now also known that FIFA charges 2,030 US dollars for the cheapest Final ticket somewhere high up under the roof of the stadium in New Jersey. Those who want to see a quarterfinal must pay at least 500 US dollars. Because in later sale rounds a dynamic pricing system is to be applied. If demand is high, the tickets could become even more expensive. That belongs to the sports culture in the USA, FIFA said about it.
How expensive tickets could be is evident on the platform that FIFA has set up for customers who want to resell their card. The Guardian reports that a Final ticket of the cheapest category was offered there for 25,000 US dollars. FIFA, of course, has nothing against this official secondary market. It profits from 15 percent of every transaction on the platform.
Dark Crypto World
But there is more. The world federation really leaves nothing out in order to prove that it has arrived in the grim world of crypto-capitalism. Four years ago it began selling NFTs, those image files secured on various blockchains, whose uniqueness is supposed to convey value. Like so much in the crypto world, the market for these tokens collapsed quickly.
But because FIFA had already built a platform called “Fifa Collect,” they wanted to keep using it. Those one-off tokens were now linked with the “Right to buy for FIFA Tournaments.” For the right to be allowed to purchase a World Cup Final ticket, 999 US dollars had to be paid. The ticket price would, of course, be added on top. The quotas were allocated by nations. The English quota, for example, is long since sold out. Should England fail to qualify for the final, buyers are left with nothing but a digital image for roughly 1,000 US dollars.
In New York, Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic candidate for the office of mayor, has come to the forefront of a protest movement against FIFA’s pricing policy. “Game over Greed,” the whistle for greed, is his campaign against the sprawling FIFA capitalism. That FIFA intends to realize four times as much money at the upcoming World Cup as it did in 2022 in Qatar astonished him. FIFA took in 5.8 billion US dollars back then.
Meanwhile, the news portal bloomberg.com reports that the Swiss gambling-regulation authority has initiated a preliminary review of the sale of blockchain-based tokens. It concerns the very digital cards that fans can exchange for World Cup tickets. It is being examined whether FIFA with its Collect platform does not engage in something akin to gambling that would contravene the rules applicable in Switzerland.
The luck of the Albanian fans over the victory against Serbia will surely not dampen discussions about ticket prices. FIFA is sure to be pleased with the images from Tirana. The footage of football-mad fans could dynamically push World Cup ticket prices upward.
