FIFA Welcomes Soccer Fans to the World Cup Matches by Moving Them to the Cheap Seats After Charging Them for the Premium Ones

Pool. Getty Images.

I've never pretended to be the biggest fan of The Beautiful Game. Over the two-plus years I spent in a Boston radio studio, both TVs were turned to soccer matches every single day. Because one of my co-hosts and producer love the sport. More power to them, but for me it didn't even work as something to half watch. The "fish tank" you turn on while you're doing other things. I'd just as soon silently watched Dan LeBatard and his dad. But that's just me. I don't begrudge anyone who wants to watch it. 

But the World Cup is different. I can follow anything every four years. If I can watch Curling and Biathalon every 48 months, I enjoy humankind's most popular sport. I like it any time the world comes together for anything, as long as it doesn't involve invasions and carpet bombing. 

Any yet. Anytime something is as important to literally billions around the globe as the World Cup is, it's inevitably going to be run by the worst kinds of people. Which FIFA obviously has been for decades. And now they're not even trying to hide how much contempt they have for their most loyal fans and paying customers:

Source -  World Cup ticket buyers are accusing FIFA of “misleading” them with stadium maps that misrepresented the potential location of seats they were purchasing.

Throughout the fall and winter, FIFA sold more than 3 million tickets to the 2026 World Cup. It priced the tickets in four categories, with each category corresponding to a range of sections at each stadium, per color-coded maps embedded in the ticketing portal and published online.

The maps appeared to suggest that Category 1 tickets, the most expensive, could yield seats anywhere in a stadium’s lower bowl or, at some venues, in prime 200-level sections.

But last week, when FIFA converted tickets to specific seats in specific sections, many fans received unfavorable placements, in corners or behind a goal. Some Category 1 ticket holders were placed in sections that, at one point, were color-coded as Category 2. And seat-selection maps on FIFA’s ticketing portal and resale site show nothing available in the most coveted sections — a strong indication, fans suspect, that no seats in those sections have actually been assigned to Category 1 buyers for at least some of the World Cup’s 104 games.

And now the people affected are having their say:

Welcome to the 2026 World Cup. You say you bought a first class cabin on this Titanic? You'll be very comfortable down in steerage dancing a jig with all the Irishmen. And don't be surprised if you have to take a shift shoveling coal into the boiler. 

One of the great lines from Rounders is, "You can shear a sheep many times, but you can only skin him once." That might've been true in the underground poker circuit, but Teddy KGB has nothing on FIFA. They'll take the sheeple who live for the little quadrennial kickball tournament they run, skin them, let the skin grow back, and then skin them again. This little sleight-of-hand with the tickets they handed all their wool over for is just the beginning. The Ol' Switcheroo Massachusetts pulled on them:

Advertisement

…  was Phase 2. By the time Brazil or Germany or whomever is hoisting that uninspired little storebrand Golden Globe trophy aloft, soccer fans from around the round world will be bankrupt. And half of the US of A and everyone in FIFA will be dropping their next deuce into a golden toilet on their private jets. Couldn't happen to a better sport. Enjoy!