Not the final. Not a semi. A Category 3 seat in the upper tier of Akron Stadium for a group stage game between Colombia and Congo — listed at $3.05 million on FIFA's official resale marketplace.
Patrick McDermot stumbled across the listing while browsing out of curiosity, then shared it with the Football Ramble podcast. Host Jim Campbell summed it up cleanly: "What is especially galling about this is that this is on FIFA's official resale site and they take 15 percent from both the buyer and the seller. That's a lot of moolah."
So FIFA collects a cut on both ends of a $3 million group stage ticket. The system is working exactly as designed.
Dynamic pricing gone completely off the rails
The mechanism behind this is FIFA's dynamic pricing model, which allows resale prices to spike based on demand. In theory, that's a standard market tool. In practice, it produces listings like this — a nosebleed seat for a June 23 Group K clash priced higher than most Premier League transfer fees.
For context: at the 2022 Qatar World Cup, a Category 1 group stage ticket cost around $220. The official cap for final tickets at this tournament was meant to be $1,550. That promise has aged poorly. Final tickets on the same resale hub are currently going for $3,500 to $9,000 — and four Category 1 final seats are listed at $2,299,998.85 each.
Almost all six million tickets for the 104-game tournament have been sold since FIFA opened last-minute sales last month. The resale marketplace will stay live until the day of the final on July 19 for anyone chasing late availability.
What this means for fans actually trying to attend
Realistically, the $3 million listing is almost certainly a placeholder or a troll entry — nobody is paying that for a group stage seat in the upper deck. But the fact that it can exist on FIFA's own official platform, generating a potential 15% cut for the governing body, says plenty about how the tournament's commercial infrastructure is built.
Anyone still hunting for a ticket would do well to treat the resale hub as a long game. Prices tend to drop as match day approaches and sellers get nervous about holding unsold inventory. The bargains — such as they are — come late.
FIFA takes its cut either way.
