FIFA raises top ticket price for World Cup final to nearly $16,000 during glitch-hampered sales reopening

FIFA raised its top ticket price for the World Cup final to almost $16,000 (Australian) during the glitch-hampered reopening of sales after the 48-team field for this year's tournament was finalised.

The top ticket price was $15,900, a sharp increase from the original $12,560 when FIFA sold tickets after the tournament draw in December.

FIFA's category 2 tickets for the July 19 game at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, were $10,680, up from $8,068, and category 3 cost $8,371, an increase $6,056.

Tickets were listed for 17 of the 72 group-stage matches by Wednesday night local time and none of the knockout stage games.

Only $3,958 tickets, the highest-priced seats, were available by evening for the US opener on June 12 against Paraguay at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California, and the price was unchanged from December.

Only $4,319 seats were available by Wednesday evening for the tournament opener between Mexico and Saudi Arabia on June 11 in Mexico City, up from $3,408 in December.

And only $3,241 tickets were available for Canada's first game on June 12 against Bosnia-Herzegovina in Toronto, an increase from $3,140.

Soccer's governing body did not announce which games and price categories were available, leaving potential ticket buyers to search themselves on a FIFA ticketing site that often took hours to enter.

Some people who clicked on what FIFA called its "last-minute sales phase" when sales opened were directed into a queue for "PMA late qualifier supporters sales phase", aimed for a segment of fans for the six nations who earned berths on Tuesday.

FIFA did not have an explanation for why the link misdirection occurred but said around noon that the links were working properly.

FIFA also said that not all remaining tickets were being put on sale for the 104 games to be played in the US, Mexico and Canada from June 11 to July 19 and that additional tickets will be released on a rolling basis.

Dynamic pricing debacle

Football's governing body is using dynamic pricing for the tournament, which will be played in 11 US cities plus three in Mexico and two in Canada.

"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 Congress wrote in a March 10 letter to FIFA President Gianni Infantino.

"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."

For the month-long sales phase after the December 5 draw, tickets were priced at $200 to $12,561.

After complaints, FIFA said $86 tickets would be made available to each participating national federation for their most loyal supporters, an amount likely to be 400-700 per team for each match.

FIFA also has its own resale market, collecting 15 per cent from both the buyer and seller.

Bosnia-Herzegovina, Congo, the Czech Republic, Iraq, Sweden and Turkey completed the World Cup field. Fans of teams eliminated Tuesday could attempt to resell tickets they already had purchased, nations that include Italy, Poland, Denmark, Jamaica and Bolivia.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino claimed in January that the amount of ticket requests FIFA had received was the equivalent of "the request for 1,000 years of World Cups at once".

"This is unique," he said at the time. "It's incredible."

It was unclear if many of those requests were for seats in the lowest-price categories.

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