coochiee wrote:
https://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/360968211/ticket-sales-revealed-all-whites-fifa-world-cup-opener-against-iran
Also Tuesday, The Athletic reported that tickets sales are lagging for the United States’ opener against Paraguay on June 12 at Inglewood, California.
It said a document distributed to local organizers dated April 10 said 40,934 tickets had been purchased for the US-Paraguay game and 50,661 for the Iran-New Zealand contest on April 15. FIFA projects SoFi's World Cup capacity at about 69,650, noting it may change.
FIFA's December sale priced US-Paraguay tickets at $1,120, $1,940 and $2,735, and Iran-New Zealand seats at $140, $380 and $450.
The really interesting question is going to be... how many of those 41,000 tickets sold are sitting in the accounts of touts needing to sell them still? It could be as many as a quarter, if not more. It seems like bots are cleaning out the recent drops in the FIFA ticketing portal and it seems like there is a lot of tickets still waiting to be sold.
Something called Sports Illustrated Tickets (as in the American sports magazine) has invested heavily in the ticket resale market...
Eagle Point Credit Management has “recently increased” its $50M financing package to Sports Illustrated Tickets to “help fund its plan to purchase World Cup tickets and resell them with huge mark-ups”
Iran will always sell well in LA. I think once there is more certainty about them playing in the tournament, that match will sell out without too much difficulty. But I also think there will be a huge number of matches where there just isn't the kind of demand to meet the insane prices that are being asked right now.
In Qatar, they opened the gates around kickoff and let people in for free to try to fill seats (so I've been told, but I did see people crowding around a gate at one match. I was usually in the stadium long before kickoff), but it's hard to imagine them doing the same this summer.
A note for anyone going to Vancouver... they are closing two SkyTrain stations on match day. The main one is Stadium-Chinatown which is the stop for the stadium coming from the east. But they're also closing Yaletown-Roundhouse... the statement said those stations "will not provide pedestrian access to BC Place Vancouver due to the secure event perimeter and crowd-control routing."
I understand Stadium-Chinatown (and on the Expo Line, you can get off one stop earlier at Main Street-Science World and it's a short walk to where it looks like the perimeter is set up, so it's not a huge inconvenience) since that station is very close to the stadium. But Yaletown-Roundhouse is 6 blocks away or so. And it's the first stop past False Creek on the Canada Line which comes from the south. I guess you're supposed to keep going and get off at Granville or City Centre which IMO is just as close to the stadium as Yaletown-Roundhouse, but Yaletown is nicer, has a lot of good food and drink options and is a much nicer station/area than getting off at Granville. It's not a big deal, but I can't really get my head around there not being pedestrian access to the stadium from Yaletown-Roundhouse on match days.
They are increasing buses and train service and there are supposed to be more water taxis as well, but BC Place is really well serviced by train and now they're closing the main stations that service the stadium.
