Tickets to next summer’s FIFA World Cup games in Toronto and Vancouver are garnering eye-popping resale prices, and they’ve been driven even higher following last week’s draw to see which teams would play where and against who.
In November, soccer’s international governing body announced that more than two million tickets had been sold for the tournament’s 104 games, to be played across Canada, the United States and Mexico between June 11 and July 19.
Tickets for the six games in Toronto and seven in Vancouver sold out almost as quickly as they were released and have been racking up the dollars on the resale market.
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FIFA has their own resale and exchange marketplace, which is temporarily offline until Dec. 15, but prices on non-FIFA affiliated resale sites are seeing prices in the thousands for the coveted few games on Canadian soil.
Now that fans know the Canadian men’s national soccer team (CanMNT) will be playing in three of such games—one in Toronto and two in Vancouver—and their opponents have (mostly) been revealed, it’s impacted the resale market.
“The draw was a turning point, because a lot of the prices were based, up until that point, on speculation,” Vijay Setlur, marketing instructor at York University’s Schulich School of Business, told CTV News Toronto in an interview.
“(The resale market) was driven by other factors such as the limited capacity of Toronto’s stadium, the interest in the World Cup in this market. So, it was a combination of both limited supply compared to other stadiums, and also a lot of demand. So, that’s kind of what was driving the prices up until the draw.”
Setlur explained that, since the draw, prices have stabilized and will likely remain where they are now that they’ve adjusted to account for the demand to see each match based on which teams are featured.
“I wasn’t sure if there would be a decline in some ticket prices, but it seems like that may have been the case, especially for the countries that are not as glamorous or as sexy as some others,” said Setlur.
”The games involving Germany and Croatia are good, but overall... the schedule for Toronto isn’t the greatest and that’s by design. We have the smallest stadium out of all 16, and to have a marquee matchup in this city, compared to an 80,000 seat NFL stadium, is not going to happen."
When CTV News Toronto first reported on some of the resale prices for the World Cup on Nov. 20, a pair of tickets on Stubhub for CanMNT’s first match in Toronto on June 12 was starting at C$1,257 per seat.
Now, at the time of publication, the cheapest per ticket price for a pair of seats reselling on Stubhub is $2,735. The most expensive set is on sale for $111,751 per ticket.
Compare that with the resale market in Vancouver.
Resale tickets for Canada’s game against Qatar on June 18 start at $992, while resale costs for their game against Switzerland on June 24 are listed as starting at $828. The most expensive seat for the former is currently $4,700, while the latter’s most expensive is $5,874.
“The game in Toronto is the first ever Canada game on home soil,” Setlur explained about why resale prices are drastically different between the two locales. “Vancouver’s games... they don’t have sexy opponents. I mean, Qatar and Switzerland are as vanilla as you can probably get... and they don’t have a large diaspora here.”
If the opponents in Vancouver’s CanMNT games were different, Setlur said he could see their resale value being more on par with the one game in Toronto. He also pointed to the fact Canada still doesn’t know their opponent for that opening game in Toronto, and a lot of resellers are banking on it being Italy.
“The reason why the Toronto game is so much more is because it’s based on speculation that Italy is going to be the team,” he said. “If you have extra tickets for that first game, and if Italy makes it, then you’re sitting pretty, because you could make a killing.”
“I think the areas of Toronto that have high Italian communities are going to be on fire in March, if Italy is confirmed as the team here. That will create astronomical prices like we’ve never seen before, because I think for a lot of people, that’s almost like a dream come true. A lot of people never thought that Italy would ever play Canada in any meaningful game here and for it to be a World Cup game and the first game for Canada at home... I mean, that’s going to drive prices, I think, into the five figures.”
Setlur added the draw resulted in a “market correction” of sorts on the secondary market, because people could base their resale amounts on solid information and not just speculation.
He also pointed to the fact that games with less popular matchups could come down further on the resale market once FIFA releases the remainder of the tickets.
How much of the ticket inventory has been sold has not been released because organizers are still working their way through ticket requests from participating federations, Peter Montopoli, Canada’s chief tournament officer, said last week.
“What I feel safe in saying is based on the tickets that were put together for the Visa pre-sale and the early ticket draw, we’ve sold 100 per cent of those tickets,” Montopoli told The Canadian Press. “So, whatever was available has been sold.”
How many tickets are available next will depend on what tickets participating member associations like Canada Soccer get, he added.
FIFA said fans from 212 countries and territories have bought tickets so far, with fans from the U.S. snapping up the most, followed by Canada, then Mexico, the three host countries.
With files from The Canadian Press and Alex Arsenych
