Harp Patel’s family are huge soccer fans.
So much so, the Greater Toronto Area-based family of five had plans to travel to Qatar for the 2022 World Cup. They entered the draw for tickets, got in, and secured spots for four different matches — a total of 24 tickets that amounted to around $5,500.
But when Toronto announced that it would be a host city for the 2026 World Cup, they decided to forgo Qatar and wait to experience the game on home turf.
Now, with days to go before the global tournament comes to Toronto, Patel hasn’t been able to get a single ticket to any match, even as hundreds of them — selling at higher than ever prices — remain unsold.
“Fast forward to today and number one, we can’t get tickets, we’ve missed out on several lotteries. And looking at the resale market … we’re just completely priced out,” Patel told CBC Radio’s Metro Morning Monday.
Dozens of soccer fans have voiced their frustrations on Reddit forums and Instagram posts about the exact same experience.
But prices for Canada’s matches could actually drop “quite dramatically” over the coming days in order to get fans into the stadium, said Simon Kuper, a soccer writer and columnist who’s covered eight World Cups.
And with FIFA’s resale prices for Toronto’s inaugural match going down, there may still be a sliver of hope for fans like Patel to get reasonably priced tickets.
“FIFA knows that in the U.S. in particular people pay much higher prices for sports tickets generally than in other countries. And they wanted to tap that into the World Cup,” Kuper told CBC Radio’s Metro Morning Monday.
“In the end, they are going to try and get people into the stadium. So prices must fall.”
Why FIFA World Cup tickets aren’t selling out in Toronto
FIFA is the official seller and reseller of World Cup tickets. On Monday, its lowest resale ticket for Toronto’s first match on June 12, Canada versus Bosnia-Herzegovina, went down to $534 on its website. Earlier this month, the lowest price was just over $1,300.
Patel said that while her family was expecting to pay a premium for Toronto tickets, it feels “like it might be completely out of reach.”
“We can barely afford two or three tickets for the price that we were to pay for 24 tickets back then,” she said.
Kuper said experiences like Patel’s could “definitely tarnish FIFA’s brand,” but once the tournament actually begins, misgivings about the World Cup tend to diminish, he said.
Patel said she’s now looking for other ways for her family to experience the World Cup outside of Toronto Stadium.
“At the end of the day we’re telling our kids you know what, if we get tickets maybe one of you can go, maybe three of us can go,” she said.
“We thought, ‘what better experience for our Canadian-born children [than] to experience the World Cup here in Toronto?’”
“I am counting down the sleeps now, because that’s just the number of days I have left to find tickets for my boys.”
