FIFA officially sells tokens for World Cup tickets. As a result, the tokens can only buy expensive tickets.

Hupu, October 11th After paying hundreds or even thousands of dollars for the "right to buy" tickets to the 2026 World Cup, some fans now say they feel they have been "ripped off," "scammed" or "taken advantage of" by FIFA and its digital collectibles platform FIFACollect.

Over the past year, FIFA and its cryptocurrency partner Modex have sold tens of thousands of "right to buy" tokens on the platform. Each token sold for a few hundred dollars and promised that buyers would be able to purchase one or two World Cup tickets at a later date at a then-unannounced full price.

FIFACollect clarifies on the FAQ page: "Purchasing the right to buy tickets (RTB) does not include the cost of the ticket itself."

Despite this, fans and scalpers still flocked to the game. Many view so-called "real-time buy" (RTB) options as a clever way to bypass the World Cup ticket lottery and perhaps be more cost-effective than buying on the secondary market, where tickets are currently priced well above their original price.

However, on Tuesday, when FIFACollect administrators revealed that the vast majority of RTB holders could only purchase Category 1 and Category 2 tickets (the most expensive tickets in FIFA's first phase of sales, and therefore the least sought-after), some holders were furious.

"No way," one user wrote in disbelief on the Discord channel (interaction among users and with FIFACollect administrators).

"This is too bad, so what's the use of buying this token?" another user said.

Multiple RTB holders told TA that they and many others thought they could use the tokens to purchase more affordable tickets. TheAthletic reviewed a December 2024 email from FIFACollect, which told early buyers: "Tickets will be divided into different categories, providing options to meet various preferences and needs."

One of the buyers, Jon Heath, told TA: "For me, The point of this is (seemingly) to be able to buy tickets in cheaper categories at face value."

However, he's already spent thousands of dollars on tokens related to the U.S. Men's National Team opener, and now he has to pay an additional $1,940 for each Tier 2 ticket, or an additional $2,735 for each Tier 1 ticket.

FIFACollect managers said on Tuesday that 70% of the tickets to be made available to RTB holders will fall into the most expensive first category; 28% will fall into the second category; and only 2% will fall into the third category. Category 4 tickets will not be available for purchase at all.

"Had I known these percentages in advance, I would not have purchased RTB," Heath wrote.

Ellen Diaz, a long-term FIFACollect user and RTB buyer, told TA: "The whole community is angry."

Many people have also sold their RTB tickets on FIFACollect's secondary market. Prior to Tuesday's Discord call with the user, dozens of RTB tickets were being resold for profit every day. In the hours after the call, amid the din of online public opinion, some market prices plummeted below the original purchase price.

"The market is collapsing," Diaz said Wednesday night. "Very bad."

Everyone's opinion is not unanimous. Some token holders pointed out that in some cases, the price of the tokens + tickets they purchased was roughly equivalent to or lower than the current price of the same type of tickets on FIFA’s resale platform.

However, some people objected to this calculation and felt aggrieved.

"I feel like I was cheated," Weston Binford said. He spent thousands of dollars on tokens to several Texas games over the past month but is now "disgusted" by how expensive the tickets themselves are. "I feel stupid."

Block is a loyal LiveTicket user who asked to be identified only by his online nickname. He told TA: "We were taken advantage of and seemed to have no voice."

"We have been lied to for a long time," Diaz wrote in a WhatsApp message. "There's nothing we can do about it."