Devoted fans remain locked out of FIFA's World Cup ticket process

Javier Ochoa first saw Mexico’s national soccer team play when he was a college student in North Carolina in 2009. He was hooked. That started a lifelong obsession for Ochoa, a Los Angeles resident with deep roots in Mexico.

But with the game coming to Mexico this summer on its biggest stage — the 2026 World Cup — Ochoa is resigning himself to the fact he may not be able to attend a game.

As with previous World Cups, FIFA is using a series of random draws through which fans can apply for tickets. The organization has said its methods prevent the influence of the resale market, maintain legitimacy of the tickets, and ensure revenue can be returned back to federations. But the confusion of the process, coupled with sheer demand, has ultimately prevented devoted fans like Ochoa from getting tickets.

The prevalence of the U.S. resale market — a factor that wasn’t as relevant in Qatar, Russia, or Brazil in the last three tournaments – meant FIFA used variable pricing, with ticket costs changing based on demand, said Jhamie Chin, FIFA senior media relations officer. Variable pricing is often associated with price gouging, but in this case, was used in an attempt to keep prices relatively down to earth. That’s a new model for this World Cup.

“If we had flat pricing that was very low, folks would scoop those tickets up and then charge them for 10 times on the resale market,” Chin said.

If fans were not successfully able to purchase tickets through the random draws, FIFA has said that remaining inventory will be sold closer to the tournament. Those fans can also browse FIFA’s resale and exchange marketplace for tickets that have been listed by those applicants who were successful.

But those tickets, even on the official resale marketplace, are being listed at massively inflated prices. For the U.S. team’s first game at the tournament — June 12 in LA against Paraguay — the cheapest ticket is listed at more than $1,300. 

For the final, at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, the lowest price for a ticket is nearly $10,000 on the marketplace. The highest price is around $230,000.

Chin said using FIFA’s resale platform is the only way to ensure tickets are legitimate. Third party resale platforms like StubHub or TicketMaster began listing World Cup tickets as early as 2024, before tickets were even initially sold. Those were instances of “speculative selling,” Chin said, where resellers list tickets in hopes a consumer would opt to pay their often exorbitant prices before FIFA set their official pricing for tickets.

“That's definitely still an option for folks, but we've just been advising everyone to basically say that our platform is the only one that you can fully trust,” Chin said.

Effectively, FIFA has absorbed the resale market in an effort to protect fans. But members of supporters groups like Ochoa — who, with Ivan Toribio, runs the 200-member-strong L.A. branch of Pancho Villa’s Army, a collective of U.S. residents who support the Mexican national team — say the outcome is the same. True fans are still being priced out.

“Some people are pretty frustrated,” Toribio said. “But I’m not complaining because I don’t have a solution for the problem. I don’t know how I would get the people who really want to be there to that game.”

Luck of the draw

Nearly a million tickets were available and sold in two random selection draws throughout the fall, Chin said. An initial draw was open from Sept. 10-19, available only for holders of qualifying Visa cards, and a second from Oct. 27-31. A third phase, which ran from Dec. 11 to Jan. 13,  has seen more than 500 million users submit applications, he said. That’s a higher demand than in any previous World Cup, driving prices ever higher.

Around 8% of the ticketing allotment was also distributed to federations for each game they play. In U.S. Soccer’s case, those tickets were set aside for “eligible insiders” during each of FIFA’s three draws. 

Whitney Zalewski, operations manager for American Outlaws — one of the largest supporters groups for the U.S. Men’s National Team with tens of thousands of members — said those tickets started at $60. But there weren’t enough of those tickets available, nor was the process intuitive enough, she said. Applicants still had to enter the standard draws, meaning they had to commit to spending more money if they weren’t selected for the insiders’ tickets. 

“That turned a lot of people away,” she said. 

FIFA President Gianni Infantino has maintained that 90% of ticket revenue will be reinvested into boosting global development in each of the World Cup’s participating federations. Chin said that FIFA’s efforts to replace the secondary market had that commitment in mind.

There’s a good chunk, 50% or maybe slightly less, that would not operate without funding from FIFA,” he said. “Think about smaller nations… That money is going back to football as opposed to going to scalpers.”

And while Zalewski agreed with that sentiment, and that of reducing the possibility of resellers taking advantage of desperate fans, she described some of the process as a “complete mess.”

“If that’s their true intention, we always want to deter from that,” she said. “But it's hard to explain to someone who's been a member for a really long time that some random person with a Visa card got to potentially get tickets before them, because FIFA decided to do that drawing first.”

But just like Ochoa, Zalewski said supporters’ groups will “deal with the cards they’ve been dealt.”

For the American Outlaws, that means attending the USMNT’s send-off matches throughout this spring — with supporters’ section tickets capped at $45 through an agreement with U.S. Soccer. 

Those who can’t attend the games themselves plan to organize massive watch parties and events. Ochoa will be in Mexico City “no matter what,” and anticipates many of his friends with Pancho Villa’s Army will join him. 

“I want to be realistic, but I do still have hope,” Ochoa said. “But regardless of whether I get selected to buy tickets, I’m still going to Mexico City, I’m still going to Guadalajara.”

Those events will be the substitute for these fans’ World Cup experiences. And while it’s not the same as being in the stadium to see their country play in their own backyard, supporters’ groups realize it may be the unfortunate reality of the largest sporting event in the world.

“This World Cup is so inaccessible to so many that there’s going to be some really cool community things happening,” Zalewski said.