FIFA’s Official Resale Site Leaves Ticket Sellers Unpaid

With the 2026 World Cup fast approaching, a growing number of fans are accusing FIFA of failing to pay them for tickets they resold through the organization’s own official platform. Soccer’s governing body set up an authorized resale marketplace specifically so ticket holders who could no longer attend matches could sell their seats to other fans, rather than turning to informal or unauthorized resale channels.

The idea was simple: sellers would list their tickets on FIFA’s site, buyers would purchase them there, and the money would then be passed along to the original ticket holders. But according to reporting from the Mexican newspaper Reforma, that final step hasn’t been happening. Just three months before the tournament—set to open in June 2026 across venues in the United States, Mexico, and Canada—many sellers say the payments they were promised have simply not arrived.

The situation raises questions about how FIFA is managing the finances of a resale system it created and controls, especially given the tournament’s massive scale as the first World Cup hosted jointly by three countries and featuring an expanded 48-team format. For fans who relied on that promised income, the delay adds financial uncertainty just as ticket demand—and prices—are expected to spike ahead of kickoff.

For more details on this developing story, read the full report from Reforma.

Image: Gareth1953 All Right Now, BY 2.0 (via Openverse).