Customers who say their World Cup dreams were shattered by unfulfilled ticket orders are suing StubHub, the online ticket reseller, following weeks of widespread complaints from frustrated fans.
Julia Reeker Moghal and Reuben Renteria, both California residents, initiated legal action this week in a New York federal court. They allege that StubHub’s “false and misleading” sales practices left them without the tickets they purchased for group stage matches last month.
The lawsuit, which aims to achieve class-action status, contends that Moghal and Renteria are among potentially hundreds or thousands of World Cup enthusiasts who bought tickets only to discover they “did not exist, were revoked without any forewarning, or had been erased.”
This, the suit claims, was due to what tournament organizer FIFA described as “poor digital infrastructure.”
Beyond seeking monetary damages, Moghal and Renteria are requesting that StubHub be prohibited from selling World Cup tickets and that any profits derived from such sales be distributed to affected customers.
StubHub declined to comment directly on the lawsuit but issued a statement asserting that its “singular goal is to get fans into events.”
The company added, “If anything goes wrong, our FanProtect Guarantee provides replacement tickets or a full refund. The World Cup is no different, and the issues fans have experienced are largely driven by problems with the event organizer’s own ticketing infrastructure.”
FIFA encourages fans to purchase tickets through its official marketplace, where it applies a 30% surcharge to every resold ticket, split evenly between the buyer and seller. In its own statement, the organization declared it “has no visibility over, or control of, secondary market ticket transactions carried out on third-party platforms” and “rejects any suggestion that the functional issues being experienced by users of third-party platforms” are a result of FIFA’s ticketing infrastructure.
For weeks, fans have taken to social media to voice their grievances, reporting tickets that never arrived from resellers, last-minute order cancellations, and hours spent attempting to resolve issues between FIFA’s ticketing system and external resale platforms.
According to the lawsuit, Moghal paid $1,905 for three tickets to the June 18 Switzerland-Bosnia and Herzegovina match at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California. She never received them nor a refund, which would constitute a violation of StubHub’s guarantee.
As the match approached, Moghal reportedly received conflicting information: first a notice that tickets were ready, then a cancellation, followed by a misleading assurance that tickets would still be delivered.
After the initial cancellation, Moghal spent hours on the phone with StubHub, which initially maintained the cancellation but then reversed course, promising delivery an hour before the match. Moghal drove to the stadium and waited in line, but the tickets never materialized. She was then promised a refund that also never arrived.
Had she known “that StubHub was either unable to deliver or not authorized to deliver her World Cup Tickets to her, she never would have purchased them,” the lawsuit states.
Similarly, Renteria paid $2,294 for two tickets to the June 18 Mexico-South Korea match in Guadalajara, Mexico, but never received his tickets. Like Moghal, Renteria received a notification that his tickets were ready, only for StubHub to cancel the order.
He eventually received a refund after “significant complaints to StubHub,” but was left to absorb the cost of his travel to Mexico.
