Scotland World Cup Tickets Update
Final ticket sales window opens and seat numbers are confirmed
FIFA yesterday opened the “last-minute sales” portal, 10 weeks before the tournament starts. This was mainly an attempt to drum up interest/panic in their unsold, less popular matches.
However there were still reports of a few hundred tickets available for both Scotland Vs Haiti and Scotland Vs Morocco. These sold out within a couple of hours, by the lucky few that weren’t directed to the wrong queue by FIFA!
Yes, FIFA kindly emailed people to inform them of yesterday’s sale, but included a link that defaulted to the PMA (participating members association) sales queue. Similarly, if you loaded the FIFA tickets website, lots of people were automatically forced into a queue, which was again for the PMA tickets; but the user wasn’t to know this. After hours of waiting, fans were then asked for their PMA code, which would be for the fans of those teams that qualified this week (Bosnia, Czechia, Sweden and Turkey). The Scottish PMA sale was conducted through the SSC some months ago, with 3,889 tickets for the games in Boston, and 3,736 tickets for the game in Miami Vs Brazil. There were nearly 10,000 SSC applications for each game and so thousands are left trying to obtain tickets through other means.
Those that were lucky enough to get tickets yesterday, seem to be anyone that was able to login and specifically choose the “last-minute sales” queue, while being patient enough to wait for up to three hours to get access to the website.
FIFA also introduced “dynamic pricing” at this stage, because of course they did. Despite the widespread criticism they’ve faced worldwide on pricing already, they still increased the face value of sought after matches by over 10%. This included Scotland games, and so the $600 tickets were now $665. Shameless.
As FIFA finalises hospitality sales, final stadium configuration and segregation, there may be further ad-hoc tickets released and added to the website between now and the day of the game. There is no way to set an alert for this, and so anyone who is able to buy face-value tickets from FIFA between now and the tournament will do so by pure chance.
The resale portal also re-opens today, as it has been shut since February. This is where you can buy tickets from other fans, who are looking to sell unwanted tickets, through FIFA’s official site, with an unlimited price ceiling. They can charge anything they want, with 15% going to FIFA. A further 15% is then taken from the buyer, too.
As it’s been shut for a couple months, lots more tickets might enter the resale portal today and over the coming months, which through supply and demand may bring the prices back down towards face value, the closer we get to the tournament. However, due to the 30% FIFA levy, even if the prices drop, obtaining a ticket through the resale portal at face value will still be difficult - as that would mean the seller will be making a loss.
Lastly, those with existing tickets are now able to login to their FIFA ticketing account and see their exact seat numbers. Roshan, one of the subscribers on this website, has used the group chat to provide links for you to access an interactive view from your seat. The links are include below, alongside the stadium layout where I’ve highlighted the official Scotland SSC sections with a salmon pink coloured circle. The article ends with a clip of me on BBC radio this morning chatting to Phil Goodlad who is now a good friend of mine due to how often we have spoke over the last few years!
If you are not already in the group chat, you can join it via this link. It’s only for paying subscribers, and there’s already been some face value ticket sales between members in there. Members are also quick to help each other by posting links when tickets become available or when the price drops on the resale portal. Any paying subscriber can create a thread, and can reply to existing threads. The substack layout can be confusing, so just check you have hit reply within the existing thread, otherwise your reply will start a whole new thread, within the overall group chat, and won’t be seen by the person you’re replying to.
BOSTON
