The FIFA World Cup kicked off on Thursday with an image it had desperately wanted to prevent.
Noticeable swaths of unoccupied seats emerged in stadiums on the opening day of action as the fallout from the governing body’s contentious World Cup ticketing approach became instantly visible to a worldwide television viewership.
The tournament’s second fixture, South Korea versus Czechia at Estadio Akron in Guadalajara, provided the most glaring early indication of the issue. Vacant sections were plainly visible throughout the contest, especially in the VIP zones and areas across from the primary camera, as per The Mirror US.
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It was an image that FIFA had invested months and millions attempting to avoid. As late as early June, the governing body discreetly reduced prices across all 104 fixtures and released 70 percent of its bulk-reserved hotel accommodations in what seemed to be an eleventh-hour push to populate venues. However, these efforts fell short.
As of the day before the tournament began, roughly 180,000 tickets remained posted across FIFA’s official resale platforms. Approximately 15,000 group-stage tickets were still obtainable directly through FIFA’s website.
For the United States’ opening encounter against Paraguay on June 12, among the tournament’s most highly anticipated matchups, more than 4,400 seats were still unsold on official channels, with the lowest-priced tickets still set at $1,120 directly from FIFA and the median resale value exceeding $800 despite a 20 percent drop in prices over the preceding month.
The roots of the crisis lie firmly with FIFA’s choice to implement variable pricing, a system it has differentiated from “dynamic pricing” primarily through linguistic distinction, for the first time at a World Cup.
Costs for 90 of the 104 matches climbed by an average of 34 percent between October 2025 and April 2026. The most affordable standard admission to the final reached $5,785.
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The premium seats hit $10,990 before subsequently tripling once more. Final tickets on the resale platform were at one stage listed at nearly $33,000.
When the United States, Canada, and Mexico presented their initial hosting proposal, a place at the final was guaranteed at a maximum of $1,550.
The attorneys general of New York and New Jersey initiated a formal inquiry into the pricing tactics, issuing subpoenas to FIFA, with Texas having subsequently followed suit with its own investigation. A congressional representative has also demanded that Gianni Infantino appear before Congress.
A day before the tournament kicked off, Infantino justified the pricing by contending that cheaper tickets would have been resold on the black market.
The vacant seats on opening day represent the most definitive rebuttal yet to that reasoning. FIFA boasted in January that its ticketing platform had registered over 500 million booking requests. Yet judging by Thursday’s opening matches, demand at FIFA’s asking prices was significantly less impressive.
