FIFA sneakily slashes price of World Cup tickets to fill empty seats — USA Soccer Stud

AFP

Given a crap economy, World Cup tickets aren’t flying off shelves. South Africans have complained about high ticket prices and online applications. Americans have complained about astronomical travel costs. And FIFA’s president said last week he worried high prices were scaring away prospective spectators.

As a result, FIFA ticketing slashed the price of at least 30 percent of unsold tickets. But they didn’t technically slash prices, the organizing body said, they just increased the number of cheap seats at the expense of expensive seats. “It is not about dropping prices. The prices are not touched,” FIFA said.

Translation, if you already bought primo tickets, you’re out of luck. Plus, FIFA says the majority of cheap seats are still being reserved for South Africans. “We will increase the number of [cheap] tickets because we cannot have a situation where the FIFA World Cup is in South Africa and people cannot see matches,” a representative said.

A total of 2.1 million initial tickets of 2.9 available have been sold so far, reports the AFP. South Africans have bought 898,170 tickets, followed by 121,190 in the United States and 98,056 in the United Kingdom.