Fifa World Cup tickets on resale for $11m as costs soar

Tickets for this year’s Fifa World Cup are being resold for an eye-watering $11m as fans fear taking out second mortgages to get to North America.

The category four ticket at the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami would give a fan access to Scotland’s showpiece group match against Brazil, but will cost $11m on Fifa’s official World Cup resale website.

Watching England take on Croatia, Ghana and Panama wouldn’t cost quite that much but there are resale tickets going for $17,000 against Luka Modric’s side, $29,000 to watch Thomas Tuchel’s team play Ghana and $17,000 for the potential decider.

Scotland’s fixture against Haiti could set fans back $85,000 while tickets versus Morocco are as high as $57,500.

World Cup tickets soar

“Fifa are being very coy as to the number of tickets that have been sold for the tournament,” football finance expert Kieran Maguire told City AM. “It would appear that the strategy is to initially try to sell as many tickets to as many people as possible regardless of whether or not those people are football fans.

“It does appear that they may have been oversubscribed even at high prices with a view to people putting them on the secondary market and then making a profit from flipping the tickets. This is actually really good news for Fifa because they get the benefits of selling tickets initially through the first sets of releases.

“Fifa keeps the money from the sales and if people then resell the tickets, Fifa takes a 30 per cent commission on the margin.”

Thousands of tickets are available on the resale platform for all six of England and Scotland’s group games – taking place across Dallas, Boston, New Jersey and Miami.

And some fans have raised concerns over the price of getting to North America.

Paul Goodwin, co-founder of the Scottish Football Supporters Association, told the Press Association: “There will be a lot of second mortgages and costs being put on credit cards. You can laugh about it, but there is a worry that some people are actually going to overextend themselves.

“It’s another huge disappointment. It’s a kick in the goolies to ordinary fans and another reminder that the further up the tree that you go, the game is getting further and further away from its origins and the people who will turn up on a wet Tuesday night in Forfar.”