The scandal over FIFA allegedly ‘price gouging’ tickets is escalating ahead of the World Cup with a senior congresswoman calling on the football governing body President Gianni Infantino to appear before Congress to ‘explain himself.’
Sydney Kamlager-Dove, a California Democrat whose constituency covers Los Angeles, where some World Cup games are being played, called FIFA’s ticketing prices a ‘total shakedown’ and said that its conduct felt like something out of the Godfather movies.
With just two weeks to go until England play their first game in the World Cup, the tournament has been thrown into chaos by high ticket prices.
Thomas Tuchel’s Three Lions’ first group match is at the 80,000-seat AT&T Stadium at Arlington near Dallas on June 17th against Croatia.
But the cheapest tickets are an eye-watering £524 – and the priciest are going for £1,431.
Last week the Attorney General of New York and New Jersey, where England will play two of their group matches, announced an investigation into the ‘fake scarcity’ of the tickets.
They have both written to Mr Infantino demanding answers.
Speaking to the Daily Mail, Ms Rep Kamlager-Dove said that in March she wrote a letter to FIFA signed by 69 US Representatives criticizing its use of dynamic ticket pricing.
President Gianni Infantino has been called on by a US congreewoman to ‘explain himself’ over ticket prices at this summer’s World Cup in the United States with criticism the costs involved
Sydney Kamlager-Dove called FIFA’s ticketing prices a ‘total shakedown’ and suggested that fans desperate to watch the games live were being exploited with sky high prices
She urged FIFA to take ‘corrective action’ – but it has so far failed to do so.
Rep Kamlager-Dove said she supported the investigation by prosecutors in New York and New Jersey into FIFA.
She hit out at the ‘incredibly exorbitant’ ticket prices and the ‘lack of civility’ towards the host cities like New York, which has been scrambling to pay for security and transport costs.
She said: ‘I’m glad the Attorney Generals are looking into this and they’re taking this seriously because at the end of the day, this is about affordability and stopping the FIFA shakedown’.
Rep Kamlager-Dove said that FIFA had been acting like ‘the sequel to the Godfather’.
She said: ‘It’s a total shakedown. There’s no transparency. There’s been no conversation about why they’re using dynamic pricing, why there’s so much disparity between ticket prices.
Rep Kalmager-Dove said that she ‘100 percent’ supports a Congressional investigation – with Mr Infantino giving evidence.
‘He needs to show up and answer these questions,’ she said. ‘I’m just repeating the concerns of fans in my district’.
Rep Kalmager-Dove urged Donald Trump to intervene and do something about the high ticket prices.
She said that he ‘needs to recognize’ that ‘this should not be about Infantino, this should be about the fans’.
However Mr Trump and Mr Infantino have been close in recent months with FIFA giving the President its first ‘FIFA Peace Prize’, an award critics said was designed to curry favour with the White House.
The chaos about tickets is affecting most matches including the opening game of tournament on June 12 in Los Angeles between the US and Paraguay.
More than 3,500 tickets to the game are still available on the official FIFA website and 6,500 are available on the official resale website, making 10,000 in total.
That is one tenth of the 100,000 capacity of the SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, a potentially embarrassing development for what is supposed to be the biggest football tournament in the world.
As part of their investigations, prosecutors in New York and New Jersey have issued subpoenas to FIFA asking for an explanation about why ticket prices have risen so much.
During the initial phase of sales, tickets for the World Cup final on July 19th were going for £5,002, which was already four times higher than the most expensive seats in the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.
Harry Kane and his England celebrates with his teammate Declan Rice of England after scoring his sides second goal during the FIFA World Cup 2026 European Qualifier between England and Latvia at Wembley Stadium on March 24, 2025
In the April sales window, those same tickets cost £8,169.
FIFA has defended how it has sold tickets and has said that the £9.5 billion that it will raise from the tournament will help grass roots football organisations around the world.
Mr Infantino has said that FIFA is merely applying ‘market rates’ and that tickets to major events in the US were generally expensive.
