Fans express outrage as US World Cup ticket prices soar  

It will be more expensive than ever to attend World Cup matches held in the United States this summer, a trend that has soccer fans in the U.S. and around the world frustrated about who will have access to watch historic clashes on the pitch in person.  

The record-breaking prices are a clear representation of soccer’s growing popularity in North America and are being seen as a product of what critics say is FIFA’s shady ticketing distribution methods implemented with the profitable American consumer market in mind.  

With tickets for early tournament matches in Los Angeles and Atlanta going for more than $500 apiece, and that’s on the low end in secondary markets, soccer fans and sports business experts say fan exasperation is likely to grow before the World Cup begins in June.

“For those of us who used to moan about how soccer isn’t popular enough in the U.S., it’s kind of like careful what you wish for,” said Andrés Martinez, a soccer author and co-director of Arizona State University’s Great Game Lab.

“Global football still tries to adhere to this idea of a more populist aspiration about the accessibility of the game. That’s basically become a fiction, and this is the corporatization of World Cups on steroids,” he said.  

A major complaint among soccer fans is what they say was a lack of transparency from FIFA and host nations about how tickets were made available for purchase before they hit secondary markets.   

Some of the first tickets FIFA made available last fall, which fans shelled out thousands for without being given a specific seat assignment, did not include some of the most desirable seats in the front rows. Some even came with obstructed views, The Athletic first reported.  

FIFA sparked further outrage this week when it made available a new category of tickets in what The Athletic called “an apparent attempt to milk more money out of prime seats.”  

In a statement to The Hill, FIFA said it allocated a large block of tickets to host nations “with the selection and distribution process managed individually by the Participating Member Associations.”  

The organization did not say how many tickets had been distributed to host nations but acknowledged high demand for the first World Cup held in North America in more than three decades. 

“Each [host nation] can define its own eligibility criteria and application process,” FIFA said. “They are requested to ensure that these tickets are specifically allocated to loyal fans who are closely connected to their national teams.”  

The organization also noted it had established a secondary market portal that it insisted........

© The Hill