World Cup fans spend £4,500 on tickets to be left stranded outside stadium
World Cup fans have paid record-high prices for match tickets (Picture: Eleanor Hoad / Every Second Media) Thousands of football fans travelling to the 2026 World Cup have been caught up in one of the largest ticketing collapses in history. As football’s biggest event on the planet continues to sweep across 16 cities in the US, Canada and Mexico, many fans are finding their dream tickets cancelled at the last minute on secondary marketplaces.
The culprit is believed to be due to ‘speculative ticketing’, which is when unverified sellers list tickets they do not yet own, hoping to source them cheaper and closer to the time of the event. When these ticket prices then soar, sellers back out of the deal to resell them for a higher profit, leaving buyers empty-handed with a refund for their tickets that doesn’t cover travel costs.
One fan, Sergio Enrique Alvarado Montalvo, 45, paid $1,700 (£1,300) on StubHub to surprise his father with World Cup tickets, only to be told that the seller could not deliver them ‘I was so sad and so frustrated, and so filled with rage, anger. It was a mix of feelings that is hard to explain,’ he told BBC News.
One of the biggest ticketing collapses in history is said to be underway (Picture: Phil Duncan / Every Second Media) Thousands of fans have seen their tickets get cancelled so far this World Cup (Picture: Kai River Kanzer/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock) Another fan, Eben Pingree, 44, from Boston, faced a nearly identical scenario after his wife Caitlin paid $2,800 on StubHub for tickets to the Scotland v Haiti match to surprise their 11-year-old son Cole.
However, edspite co-ordinating an extensive trip, the tickets vanished on match day. ‘They basically had to just leave us there, and so my son was just devastated,’ they said. Two separate football fans have also filed a lawsuit against StubHub in a proposed class action on Tuesday after accusing the resale platform of failing to deliver the tickets that they had paid for.
Julie Reeker Moghal and Reuben Renteria said in a court filing they were acting on behalf of themselves and all others in a similar situation after they paid at least $1,900 each for tickets that were never delivered. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that
supports HTML5 video Up Next Previous Page Next Page Throughout this tournament, football fans have been hit by extraordinarily high prices, with fans paying £111 for a 15-minute train to one of England’s group games. On top of already paying record-high match tickets to attend games, fans were expected to spend €150 (£111) for the short round-trip ticket.
It is a staggering price increase that is nearly 12 times the usual $12.90 fare for a return trip. Yesterday, ahead of England’s 2-1 triumph over D.R. Congo in the last 32, one fan explained how he had spent his £40,000 house deposit on a World Cup trip with his dad instead. Jack Goodwin told Metro: ‘I saved up for a house, and I blew my whole house deposit to take me and my dad out here.’