Looking for a (possibly educated) opinion on the ticket prices, not anything else about the World Cup or the heads of state of the countries hosting it.
I’m interested in US ticket prices for group matches, either Philadelphia or New Jersey.
The official prices are fairly outrageous:
Currently on StubHub they are looking pretty pricey too. The minimum price for Philadelphia is $248 for NJ $446 (for the england match that I’m interested in that goes up almost $800)
So what do dopers think? Are those prices going to be the best I’ll get? Or will prices come down for the less interesting group matches? If so, when will the optimum time be to buy? If there are unsold tickets (say for Caracoa-Ivory Coast) the week of the match will they go for significantly under sticker price?
I assume with this ‘dynamic pricing’ nonsense, something like Ivory Coast vs Curuçao might be your best bet at the last minute. Or perhaps Croatia vs Ghana / Norway vs Senegal. Perhaps if there is a ‘dead rubber’ where both teams have already qualified, or neither team can qualify, in the last round of group matches (although the ‘neither’ is unlikely given the 8 3rd placed teams going through).
There are two possibilities: interest in live attendance is so small they can’t sell all the tickets to the stadium(s). Or interest in live attendance is so large they can readily sell all the tickets to the stadium(s).
In the latter case, sooner is 99.99% probability better. In the former case you get into the specifics of which matches will be clunkers. But also which matches do you care to watch? Two basement dwelling teams from countries you don’t care about are perhaps not worth your time even if they are (comparatively) cheap. Only you can make that call.
Given the planet-wide interest in World Cup attendance, the fact soccer is generally viewed as meh in the USA is misleading. I have no info on how many matches in the prior World Cup series sold out. But my bet is this time will be similar. I do not think attendance varies much depending on which country(ies) are hosting the matches. So IMO if you can find that info from last time, that will be your best guide to this time.
My guess is almost all matches almost always sell out. 8 billion people can buy more tickets than a stadium can sell. But that’s 100% guess. If that’s an accurate guess, the sooner you buy the better.
I don’t think thars the case historically. The group stages don’t sell out, except for the big matches (though it’s not totally clear as you get a lot of empty seats even in officially sold out due to FIFA sketchiness, where seats are allocated to big corporations who don’t use them all)
I suppose what really matters is how important this is to you. If you really, really need to attend this year for whatever reasons, then you’ll be willing to pay $X to hope to attend + $Y to be certain to attend. This $Y is a form of insurance. And as noted above, how much you care which match(es) you see.
Yes, yes, you want the cheapest possible price and the best possible match. We all do. But the badder you want it and the more you want whatever’s the popular event(s), the more you’ll be not only paying, but overpaying, for the privilege.
probably depends on the number of valid foreign fans that will be dragged out of their nice rental cars from ICE-holes through the smashed in windshield, early in the event-raster
Yeah but there is a key bit of information missing to make that call. What are the odds for A: a fairly undesirable group stage match (e.g. Caracao-Ivory Coast) B: an more desirable group match (e.g. England-Panama) that the current prices are the lowest we’ll see? If the current price is not most likely the lowest, when will the lowest price probably be? 3 months out? A week before? A day before?
This seems like something we should be able get rough estimates for (even if an estimate based on Qatar or Russia probably doesn’t directly apply to the US)
That’s certainly a factor. But any foreign visitor who’s already got a ticket and decides to leave the US, or decides last minute to not come in the first place has to have a way of selling their ticket.
That secondary market might be huge and oversupplied. Or totally not. Same set of imponderables apply.
It will probably be about the same as the number of foreign visitors to the Qatar world cup who were arrested for homosexuality or alcohol consumption.
True but the main difference is it was in the regime and FIFA’s interests to downplay the whole brutal dictatorship thing during the Russian and Qatar world cups, and emphasise they were lovely cultured countries with rich and compelling football histories.
Trump has no interest in that. He wants everyone to know he’s in charge and wants everyone to look at the way he’s being a boss of the world cup. He doesn’t care what anyone thinks of the actual world cup and what happens there as long as all those Manhattan elites look at him and good “wow look at powerful he is and how much he bossing it during this big prestigious event we really care about”
Though this a massive side track I specifically didn’t want to talk about this stuff on this thread. How much are the tickets going to be? Will the price go up or down, and when?
With historical 1980s style dynamic pricing (think airline tickets), it was a very reliable rule of thumb that prices only go up as time goes on. The earliest you can commit is the best time to buy.
With 2025 era dynamic pricing I think that it is utterly unpredictable. They’ll be juking and jiving the prices all day every day like a fisherman jerking the line and the bait. The public also has access ticket buying services that can buy in real time on the dips. Lastly, the scalpers are also in there buying and reselling and … for profit.
All of that suggests to me that trying to game (IOW market time) this system yourself is simply doomed to failure. Or at least is doomed to having you pay a non-optimal price. Probably by a large margin.
Which then suggests the optimal move is not to play. Instead, today go buy the ticket(s) you want and can afford at today’s offered price. Then don’t check back later about future prices. There’s no news there you want to hear.
Right, it’s simply impossible to tell this early. I have a lot of experience buying concert tickets on both the primary and secondary markets. If a concert sells out, the price of resale tickets skyrocket. If there’s plenty of seats, the price plummets. Very hard to see which way World Cup games will go, except for the few with marquee teams.
An interesting side question there. IMO the presence of scalpers and secondary markets will tend to amplify price swings.
IANA expert, but I recall some venues or sales channels or acts trying to suppress scalpers. So everybody buys only first hand and only from the official source. Ostensibly to prevent evil scalpers from gouging the true virtuous fans.
If World Cup makes any effort in the anti scalping direction that might lower the volatility. They are an utterly corrupt organization, and scalpers are big organized businesses and criminal enterprises now. Who’d grease the right palms handsomely for access to the best tickets a couple minutes before everyone else. They could buy up most of the inventory in that time. OTOH, World Cup would also prefer that 100% of the wildly inflated revenue go to them, not to middlemen.
Hard to say which flavor of greed will win out in their beady little eyes.
as you say, the best option is NOT to play the game at all.
but my “game” always worked out nicely … getting the free seats with great vista, fully climated, basically freee beer and the hot pizza is about 9 bucks, delivered to my seat!… and most often, I do not even have to take a day off … (let’s call it “noise” in the big scheme of 1900 anual hours worked) …
Any other option really does not look too favorable/competitive, compared to sitting in front of a TV-set.
the second best options surely make for an interesting thread, so there is that.
seems relevant here, and might directly impact prices of tickets…
couple of quotes:
Tourists from dozens of countries including the UK could be asked to provide a five-year social media history as a condition of entry to the United States, under a new proposal unveiled by American officials.
As well as the collection of social media information, the new document proposes the gathering of an applicant’s telephone numbers and email addresses used over the last five and 10 years respectively, and more information about their family members.
