Fifa has raised the top ticket price for this year’s World Cup final to $10,990 as it released a new batch of tickets for sale on Wednesday.
The news, which came after the 48-team field for the World Cup was set, will do little to quell claims that Fifa is pricing fans out of the tournament. The most expensive ticket for the 2022 World Cup final was about $1,600.
The price is also an increase from the last wave of ticket sales, when the most expensive tickets for the final were $8,680. Prices have also risen for cheaper bands of tickets to the final. Category 2 tickets are now $7,380, up from $5,575 in December, while Category 3 tickets are priced at $5,785, an increase from $4,185.
Fifa is using the widely criticised dynamic pricing model for this year’s World Cup, in which prices can increase or decrease depending on demand. Fifa has said profits from the tournament will help fund grassroots football across the world.
Tickets for the final and 17 group stage matches were released on Wednesday, and additional tickets will be made available on a rolling basis until the end of the tournament.
There were glitches when the new sales window opened on Wednesday. Fifa did not say which games and price categories would be available, meaning fans had to search on a Fifa website which took some users hours to enter. Fifa said this phase of sales is the first time fans can buy specific seats in a stadium rather than a general request for a ticket in a price band. Tickets will also be available on the resale market, where Fifa will take a 15% cut from both buyers and sellers.
The use of dynamic pricing has come under criticism from fans and politicians.
“The employment of dynamic ticket pricing for the 2026 FWC starkly contrasts with Fifa’s core mission to promote the accessible and inclusive promotion and development of soccer globally,” 69 Democratic members of US Congress wrote in a letter to Fifa’s president, Gianni Infantino, last month. “Despite host cities’ cooperation in bringing the vision of the largest, most global World Cup in history to fruition, the consequences of dynamic pricing will make the 2026 FWC the most financially exclusionary and inaccessible to date.”
Infantino has hailed the sales process so far. He said in January that Fifa had received what amounted to “the request for 1,000 years of World Cups at once”.
The World Cup kicks off on 11 June and will take place in cities across the US, Mexico and Canada with the final taking place in New Jersey on 19 July.
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