The Most Expensive Seats Stayed Empty - Prosecutors Open Investigation Into FIFA

During the match between South Korea and the Czech Republic, FIFA reported an almost sold out stadium in Guadalajara, but the images showed thousands of empty seats, many of them in the expensive sections near the field. Record ticket prices are under criticism, and two American attorneys general have opened investigations!

During the match between South Korea and the Czech Republic, which South Korea won 2 to 1 on Thursday, entire sections of empty seats were visible, raising questions about FIFA’s handling of the highest ticket prices ever charged at a World Cup. Many of the empty seats were located, as The Athletic reported, in premium sections close to the field, and throughout the stadium there appeared to be thousands of them.

FIFA, however, reported attendance of 44,985 in Guadalajara’s stadium, which has a capacity of 46,000, almost a full house. The organization did not clarify whether that figure was based on tickets sold or on the people who actually entered the venue. That single unanswered question contains the entire dispute, because a sold seat and an occupied seat are not the same thing, and only the eye inside the stadium knows which one truly counts.

Ticket prices for this tournament have risen fivefold compared with the 2022 World Cup in Qatar, according to the fan organization Football Supporters Europe, which described the costs as excessive. The same organization pointed out that organizers had promised tickets for as little as 21 dollars in a 2018 bid document. Matches are being played across the three host countries, the United States, Mexico, and Canada.

The attorneys general of New York and New Jersey have launched investigations over what they describe as impossibly high prices. The investigations are not limited to pricing itself but also include allegations that seating categories were later changed, fans received different seats than expected, and prices were driven upward through dynamic pricing and artificial scarcity.

FIFA President Gianni Infantino defended the pricing on Wednesday and said the costs were comparable to those of other major sporting events. If they were doing something wrong, he said, then everyone selling tickets in North America was probably doing something wrong.

On the eve of the tournament, 29 matches were sold out, while tickets remained available for 75. Reporting found that on FIFA’s official resale platform alone, nearly 179,500 tickets were still listed for sale on Tuesday, with the median resale price having dropped twenty percent over the course of a month. Tickets are also being offered through third party platforms such as StubHub and SeatGeek. After criticism, FIFA introduced a smaller allocation of 60 dollar tickets for all 104 matches through the national associations, intended for loyal supporters. There were 130,000 tickets in this category, Infantino said. Additional tickets would become available closer to match dates, and some always had to be held back for teams advancing to later rounds.

The fact that empty sections were not visible everywhere does not make the issue less serious but more obvious. At the opening match that same Thursday, between co host Mexico and South Africa in Mexico City, the stadium was completely full with 80,824 spectators. Where the game itself was the event, people came, and where the price remained and the spectacle faded, the most expensive seats stayed empty.

So an unusual contradiction emerges between the number and the image. FIFA announces an almost full stadium, and the camera shows empty chairs in the front rows where the view of the match costs the most. There is a kind of honesty in the empty seat that no statistic can overcome, because without saying a word it shows what happens when a price clears out the best sections. You can sell a ticket and still see no person sitting there, and an organization that refuses to say whether it counts tickets or people has chosen the more convenient version of the truth. In the end, what remains is the image of a seat beside the field, the most expensive one in the house, sitting empty while the loudspeakers announce a full stadium.