ICE, Iran and $1,000 ‘Cheap Seats’: The World Cup Returns to the U.S.

So fans, of course, are complaining around the world about the cost of tickets.

Rachel, for the first time ever, FIFA is using demand-driven or dynamic ticket pricing.

The result is even nosebleed seats for some early games cost more than $1,000.

That's many times more expensive than previous World Cups.

How do we know about how FIFA decided on these record high prices? What do we know about it?

We know very little, and that's part of the mystery of fans and part of fans' frustration, right? So one of the distinctive qualities of this World Cup is that FIFA didn't issue a list of ticket prices.

It just simply started dropping them on its website in these drips and drabs, and when fans, if they were lucky enough to gain access at early times on that website, um, they didn't know if how many tickets would be left, they didn't know if, if that was all, what they were looking at was gonna be all for the entire tournament, or if there would be future tickets dropped.

They didn't know if the prices would rise or fall.

Mm-hmm.

So fans have expressed a lot of frustration about just the mystery surrounding even the sales process of these tickets.

Now, you wrote that FIFA is, quote, "leveraging the potent cocktail of American World Cup to pack its war chest with money." Talk about who controls this organization 'cause we're talking about a projected $11 billion in revenue for what is a notoriously corrupt organization.

And of course the president, FIFA's president, called the US the most developed entertainment market in the world and said ticket prices had to be priced accordingly, meaning we can take your money, I assume.

That's a version of that.

I mean, ostensibly who controls FIFA is the 211 member federations that, you know, the countries around the world who belong to FIFA.

But effectively it's the FIFA Council, um, headed by Gianni Infantino, the president of FIFA.

So he and a handful of top FIFA leaders really make most of the decisions.

The war chest they're packing, as I, as I mentioned, will eventually be spread out among many of those nations, and that's one of the reasons why Infantino has enjoyed a lot of support during his-

Mm-hmm

... administration because he's increased that amount of money that he's been spreading around the globe.

And, uh, that's one of the opportunities he sees [laughs] among others, is the ability to leverage the US's incredible buying power, which is-

Mm-hmm

... uh, it far outstrips what it was even in '94 to, um, increase those disbursements around the world even further.

So it's a money grab essentially.

Now, Tariq, FIFA has also set up its own ticket resale market where it gets 30% cut on all transactions.

Other countries have very strict laws about reselling tickets, especially in Europe.