‘Hard to not feel scammed’: World Cup fans say FIFA misled them with ticket allocations, seat maps
World Cup ticket buyers are accusing FIFA of “misleading” them with stadium maps that misrepresented the potential location of seats they were purchasing.
Throughout the fall and winter, FIFA sold more than 3 million tickets to the 2026 World Cup. It priced the tickets in four categories, with each category corresponding to a range of sections at each stadium, per color-coded maps embedded in the ticketing portal and published online.
The maps appeared to suggest that Category 1 tickets, the most expensive, could yield seats anywhere in a stadium’s lower bowl or, at some venues, in prime 200-level sections.
But last week, when FIFA converted tickets to specific seats in specific sections, many fans received unfavorable placements, in corners or behind a goal. Some Category 1 ticket holders were placed in sections that, at one point, were color-coded as Category 2. And seat-selection maps on FIFA’s ticketing portal and resale site show nothing available in the most coveted sections — a strong indication, fans suspect, that no seats in those sections have actually been assigned to Category 1 buyers for at least some of the World Cup’s 104 games.
Separate maps, meanwhile, suggest that many of those lower-level sideline sections supposedly within Category 1 are actually being reserved for hospitality packages.
“A lot of people feel misled, or confused, or maybe just generally let down about the way seats were assigned,” Jordan Likover, one of the many aggrieved fans, told The Athletic.
He said he scored Category 1 tickets in FIFA’s third lottery phase, but the seat assignments he received last week for two matches at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, were in sections assigned to Category 2 at the time of his purchase.
“You can’t change the rules of the game after someone’s played,” he said. “Like, people paid expecting to be seated in one place. And then when they were assigned [seats], it’s changed.”
FIFA, in an emailed response to a variety of questions, told The Athletic that its “indicative category maps” were “to help fans understand where their seats could be located within a stadium. These maps were designed to provide guidance rather than the exact seat layout, and reflect the general extent of each ticket category within the stadium.”
It did not say why those maps did not reflect the hospitality allocations.
FIFA changed World Cup category maps midstream
The controversy, which has led some fans to submit complaints or consider legal action, stems in part from FIFA’s messy mixing of its typical ticketing strategy with its desire to capitalize on the North American market. FIFA, like Olympics organizers and other soccer bodies, has always sold tickets by category. American sports fans, on the other hand, are accustomed to selecting and paying for specific seats, meaning they know exactly what they are buying.
For the 2026 World Cup, co-hosted by the U.S., Canada and Mexico, FIFA stuck with the category approach. But it charged North American prices — and then raised them. Fans, therefore, were asked to pay hundreds of dollars extra for a seat that could, in theory, be significantly better than one in a lower category but also could be in an adjacent section.
Many, as a result, were confused — especially because FIFA did not publish stadium maps or prices ahead of time. Both the maps and prices were first revealed only to fans who won a ticket “presale” lottery in October. The maps were apparently published two weeks later on a “Stadium Information” webpage but never in a news release.
And then, in subsequent months, FIFA quietly changed them.
The initial map of Seattle’s Lumen Field, for example, looked like this:
In December, FIFA added supporters ticket sections; changed three Category 2 sections to Category 3; and changed one Category 1 section to Category 2 (the upper portion of 146).
Similar changes were made at the other 15 stadiums. “By adding these details to the maps, FIFA aimed to help [dedicated] supporters identify sections where supporters of the same team could reasonably expect to be seated together, subject to availability and final allocation,” FIFA said in its emailed statement.
In April, when fans logged on to purchase tickets in the “last-minute sales phase,” they initially saw versions of the December maps. But soon thereafter, as some Category 1 ticket holders began to point out that they’d been assigned seats in Category 2 sections or supporters sections, FIFA removed seat maps from the Stadium Information page. It then published new maps without supporters sections — even though some supporters tickets are available for resale, and even though thousands of them have been sold — and with additional tweaks.
FIFA, in its statement, noted that some supporters tickets that weren’t sold “have been released back into the general public inventory.” It said the latest maps were uploaded “to ensure clarity for fans who have already purchased tickets during earlier sales phases and have now been allocated a seat location. … These maps reflect the final reality of category zoning, without overlaying earlier planning assumptions related to supporter grouping that were no longer applicable once inventory was released more broadly.”
Andrew Swart, a New York-based fan who paid $862.50 on FIFA’s resale site for a Category 1 ticket to the U.S. vs. Australia match in Seattle, said he got assigned a seat in that upper portion of section 146. He, like others who spoke to The Athletic, called FIFA’s offerings “misleading.”
“At a bare minimum, it’s not consistent at all,” Swart said. “When you’re talking about how much money these tickets are, it makes it seem like there’s a big difference between where you may or may not be sitting.” (FIFA’s latest list price for that U.S.-Australia match was $775 per ticket in Category 1, compared to $570 in Category 2 and $310 in Category 3.)
Kiara Gilmore, a fan who in February bought Category 1 tickets to a match in Arlington but received seats in a section assigned at the time to Category 2, said: “It’s just frustrating when you think you’re paying for one thing, and you get another, and then they change [the map] on you.”
World Cup seat maps didn’t account for hospitality
The most prevalent gripe among fans who spoke with or contacted The Athletic, though, was that nobody, nor their friends, could find any Category 1 ticket buyers who’d actually been assigned lower-level sideline seats to popular matches.
The maps shown to ticket buyers suggested that these seats were within the range of possibilities. But fans began to theorize that FIFA had blocked them off for corporate partners, VIPs, hospitality or last-minute sales.
FIFA’s ticketing portal seemed to support their theories. Take, for example, the U.S. opener against Paraguay at SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles. Fans who previously purchased tickets — at $2,735 in Category 1, $1,940 in Category 2 or $1,120 in Category 3 — saw some version of the following map as their guide.
A Category 1 ticket seemed to give them a shot at any section in the 100 or 200 level.
Last Wednesday, however, a few hours after thousands of tickets to that game went on sale, Category 1 seats were only available in 200-level corner and endline sections.
And on FIFA’s resale site, although nearly 2,000 tickets were listed in total as of Friday, not a single ticket was available along the sidelines in the 100, 200 or 300 levels.
Separately, throughout 2025 and 2026, FIFA has been selling hospitality tickets that appear to be in those 100- and 200-level sections, some for upwards of $6,000.
The hospitality website clarifies: “The ticket category locations displayed in these illustrations are approximate, not definitive and are subject to change.” And for some stadiums, they have in fact changed slightly since December.
But at all stadiums, then and now, chunks of the lower level(s) on one or both sidelines are allocated to hospitality, according to these illustrations.
At Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, Mass., for example, the hospitality map looks like this:
And fans suspect that’s part of why standard ticket availability for England’s match there against Ghana looks like this…
… even though the map shown to ticket buyers looked like this:
The standard maps have not, at any stage, included hospitality sections — even though hospitality could account for around 15 percent of tickets, according to estimates from multiple people familiar with World Cup plans and stadium capacities. (The exact breakdowns will vary by game and depend on sales.)
“I feel like FIFA intentionally misled us when they provided us with that seating chart, making us think that we had a possibility of sitting beside the pitch, when in actuality that was never possible in the first place,” said Nick, a fan who spoke on the condition that his last named not be published because he worried about retribution against him or his company.
“It’s just hard to not feel scammed and/or bamboozled,” he said. He later used the terms “manipulated” and “taken advantage of.”
He said he was looking into filing a class-action lawsuit, but acknowledged that the legal grounds for one might be thin because FIFA had protected itself in its World Cup “Ticket Terms of Use.”
Those terms, last updated in October, state: “Any visual representations of Ticket Categories on the Ticketing Website, such as Stadium maps and illustrations, are for guidance purposes only and may not reflect the actual layout and boundaries of a particular Stadium.”
Two paragraphs later, the terms add: “The Ticket Holder acknowledges that FIFA Ticketing or the relevant Stadium authorities may determine the Seat Location and change the Seat Location for a given Ticket at any time, including after a Ticket has been purchased and on the day of the Match, provided that the Seat Location is in an area applicable to the same Ticket Category or a Ticket Category of Tickets with a comparable or better value.”
In some cases, for less appealing games, FIFA appears to have adjusted categorizations in ways that are favorable to ticket holders. For Iran vs. New Zealand at SoFi Stadium, for example, the entire upper deck appears to have been converted to Category 3 (or 4), according to the resale site’s seat map. And there are Category 1 tickets listed along the sideline, including in lower-level sections such as “VIP131,” which is right at midfield.
For attractive games, though, such as those in the knockout rounds or ones featuring Brazil or Argentina, there is no evidence that standard tickets in many of those lower sideline sections have been distributed. Most Category 1 buyers appear to have received seats in corners or behind goals, or higher up.
‘FIFA doesn’t have any goodwill with fans’
The seat assignment saga is the latest point of vexation in a World Cup ticketing process that has soured fans on FIFA and its banner event.
“You feel like you can’t trust them,” Gilmore said of FIFA. “The process keeps changing, the seats keep changing, the maps keep changing.”
Swart said: “FIFA doesn’t have any goodwill with fans. Our default assumption is that they’re doing something to be either underhanded or maximize profit.
“I would’ve liked to, at a minimum, had transparency,” he added. “‘OK, this is what you’re buying and this is what you’re getting.’ It shouldn’t be a controversy.”
“It’s about expectation,” Likover said. “At the time you’re buying any given product, you expect that product once you’ve paid for it. To have it slightly changed or [to be] given a different product — this is just basic commerce. You’re expecting to get the thing you paid for. And this feels like that’s not the case.”
He said he had sent FIFA a complaint via a contact form on its website. “I paid for Product A, technically I’ve been given Product B. Is there any recourse?” he asked. “Will you fully refund the difference?”
He also called FIFA’s customer service line on Friday, and was told a representative would be in touch within seven business days. As of Monday afternoon, he, like other fans who complained, hadn’t received any response.
