World Cup Resale: England Tickets Hit £22,724
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- FIFA's official resale platform has 6,135 tickets listed across the six group games involving England and Scotland, while FIFA itself is not currently selling tickets for those fixtures and takes a 30% fee (15% from each side) on every resale.
- England's cheapest available ticket is £612 for a category two seat at the Ghana game in Boston, up from a £327 face value, and the opening match against Croatia costs £628 — more than three times the £201 category three face value.
- Category four tickets for the Croatia match, originally priced at just $60/£45, are resold for as much as $2,300/£1,748, and asking prices across England's three group games reach as high as $29,900/£22,724 for category one seats.
- Scotland's Brazil fixture in Miami shows the most extreme markups, with one ticket listed at $143,750/£109,250 and the cheapest available at $1,150/£874 against a $310/£236 face value.
- The World Cup final has 421 tickets on the resale site, with the most expensive priced at $184,000/£139,840 against a maximum face value of $8,860/£6,597, and many tickets clustered around $11,385/£8,652.
- Prof Mark James of Manchester Metropolitan University noted that FIFA could have capped resale prices at face value under New York State law, which only prohibits unauthorized resales, but chose to let the market set prices instead.
- Some sellers are listing tickets at absurdly optimistic prices — a category four Scotland v Brazil ticket originally sold for $60/£45 appeared listed at $11.362m/£8.635m, which would have netted FIFA nearly $3m/£2.28m in commission if it had sold.
Why it matters: Fans who missed the original FIFA ballot now face markups of three to ten times face value — England's Croatia opener costs £628 against a £201 face value, and a Brazil group ticket lists at £109,250 — and Prof Mark James confirmed FIFA had a legal route to cap prices at face value under New York State law but opted for an open market, leaving supporters waiting and hoping more tickets drop closer to kickoff.
