A resale platform has denied being in cahoots with FIFA over World Cup tickets.
Posts from an X account belonging to Florian Ederer, a professor at Boston University Questrom School of Business, highlighted blocks of tickets being available on the SeatGeek site for the Saudi Arabia v Cape Verde match on June 26, rather than the usual single, pair or quartet of tickets that are usually made available on resale sites.
The account alleged this was evidence that FIFA was “colluding with third-party resale platforms for its own supply management”.
A spokesperson for SeatGeek told the Press Association: “SeatGeek is a trusted marketplace that gives fans secure access to tickets across tens of thousands of live events, including the World Cup. We do not have a partnership or distribution agreement with FIFA.”
FIFA has also been contacted for comment.
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The social media post said it looked like tickets were being “dumped in bulk onto secondary markets, at prices below FIFA’s official site”.
It claimed the rationale might be to avoid demands for refunds or charge-backs if ticket prices were lowered on the primary, official ticketing site.
FIFA has faced a barrage of criticism over the pricing of tickets for the finals, and the decision to adopt a dynamic pricing strategy.
FIFA has also set up an official resale platform, where it takes 15 per cent cuts from the seller and the buyer of each ticket.
Last month, FIFA president Gianni Infantino said the prices being charged were justified in the North American market.
“We have to look at the market – we are in the market in which entertainment is the most developed in the world. So we have to apply market rates,” Infantino said at a conference in Beverly Hills.
