Fifa’s resale site has some tickets for the World Cup final selling at over £1.7m.
Four seats for the competition’s finale at MetLife Stadium on 19 July have been priced at just shy of $2.3m (£1.71m), located behind a goal in the lower deck in block 124.
Fifa does not control the asking prices on its official resale marketplace but takes a 15 percent purchase fee from the buyer of each ticket, as well as a 15 percent cut from the seller.
“Fifa has established a ticket sales and secondary market model that reflects standard ticket market practices for major sporting and entertainment events across the host countries,” the governing body said in a statement.
“The applicable resale facilitation fees are aligned with industry standards across North American sports and entertainment sectors.
“Fifa’s variable pricing ticketing approach aligns with industry trends across various sports and entertainment sectors, where price adaptations are made to optimize sales and attendance and ensure a fair market value for events.”
Elsewhere, an aisle seat of the lower deck was listed at $207,000 (£153,600) while a category two seat in the last row of the uppermost third deck was listed at $138,000 (£102,400). A few feet away, another seat had an asking price of $23,000 (£17,000).
The lowest-priced tickets for the final that are listed on the marketplace came in at just under $11,000 (£8,200) for four seats just four rows from the top of the upper deck behind a goal.
Fifa president Gianni Infantino has defended the steep ticket prices for the World Cup, asserting that the global spectacle serves as the organisation’s sole source of income every four years and will be reinvested among its members to develop the sport.
“What many people don’t know, because of course we generate billions in a World Cup, people don’t know Fifa is a non-for profit organization, which means all the revenue we generate, we invest them in the organisation of the game, in 211 countries all over the world,” Infantino said.
“Three quarters of (those countries) probably would not be able to have organized football without the grants we could give them. So we always try to find the right balance.
“The main, and so far the only, revenue-generating event for Fifa is the World Cup.”
Fifa released another batch of World Cup tickets on Wednesday which included seats in Categories 1, 2, and 3, alongside the recently introduced “front category” pricing.
This new category has sparked considerable online criticism, with supporters alleging that superior seats in the categories they had already purchased were withheld, resulting in them being allocated less desirable locations.
Additional reporting from AP
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