When Club World Cup tickets first went on sale back in December, the release came with a degree of sticker shock. The cheapest tickets for any of the six games at Lumen Field were about $80 before fees and the cheapest tickets for the any of the Seattle Sounders’ three matches were around $100. What made those prices even tougher to stomach were that only seats in the 300 section were made available, with no clear timeline, process or pricing structure for tickets closer to the action.
At the same time those tickets were made available — for which Sounders season-ticket holders were given a code to gain priority access — there was a separate process for “Club Fan” tickets through FIFA. These were tickets FIFA set aside specifically for Sounders fans who had to effectively apply through the club. Those tickets were eventually revealed to be a little cheaper — and didn’t include Ticketmaster fees — while also including some that were in the Brougham End.
Over the next few months, FIFA slowly released more inventory while also trying to steer fans toward very expensive hospitality packages that presumably included more of the premium seating.
By all accounts, those sales have trailed well beyond expectations. As of early May, the Tuesday afternoon match between Argentinian giant River Plate and Urawa Red Diamonds — one of Japan’s most popular teams — had vast swaths of empty seats all around the stadium. Even the Sounders’ games against three of the world’s biggest and most popular clubs were nowhere close to selling out. It was apparently a similar story at many of the other games around the country, especially those not featuring big-name European clubs.
Finally, FIFA blinked.
At some point around May 12, prices dropped dramatically, sometimes by as much as half. The get-in price for some Lumen Field matches dropped below $40 and tickets for the Sounders-Botafogo match were about $60. Tickets to see the Sounders play Atletico Madrid started below $75. Although Sounders-PSG tickets were still starting closer to $125, the highest priced tickets near midfield are about $325.
While that was good news for fans who decided to wait until FIFA’s so called “adaptive pricing” model moved in their favor, thousands of other fans were left fuming at the realization that they had overpaid dramatically for tickets.
Over the next 10 days or so, the Sounders began working with FIFA and Ticketmaster to try to find a solution.
At least part of that solution was revealed on Thursday when the Sounders sent an email to all season-ticket holders notifying them of the situation and offering some measure of a solution that was broken into three parts:
- Fans can now buy tickets at a roughly 20% discount from the Ticketmaster prices in comparable sections, while also not having to pay any processing fees, by using this link. Tickets for Botafogo start at less than $50, with 100-level midfield seats around $150, for instance.
- FIFA has committed to offering a “partial refund” to fans who purchased through the “Club Fan Sales Window.” Details weren’t entirely clear, but it appears to mean they can return their tickets minus a 10% handling fee. The downside is that still seems to be the only way to get tickets in the designated fan sections.
- The vast majority of sales have been through Ticketmaster, though. The Sounders are asking anyone who bought tickets through Ticketmaster before May 1 to fill out this form. There’s no promise made in the email, but it does say “We don’t want our members penalized for taking early action and we want to understand how our members may have been impacted.” The implication seems to be that the Sounders are still working with Ticketmaster on a solution, but that they are expecting some kind of resolution to be found.
