Am I an Evil, Selfish Scalper for Selling My World Cup Tickets for a Profit?
The buyer, seller, and FIFA middleman were all happy with how the transaction went.
Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! Break out the bongos, it's World Baseball Classic time.
But instead, today's newsletter is about the other World Cup, the soccer one, and whether yours truly is a jerk for making a profit off my tickets (spoiler alert: I do not think I am a jerk). Then we'll have a quick hit on stadium subsidies before we close.
Don't miss sports coverage from Jason Russell and Reason.
Locker Room Links
- President Donald Trump decided to take some time away from the small matter of war with Iran to spend an hour on a college sports roundtable (no current athletes were present). He seems intent on an executive order that will look "to solve all the problems" of college sports, but will likely get challenged in court and possibly overturned by his successor.
- Trump has been passionately supporting the Iranian women's soccer team's request for asylum in Australia (where they were competing in the Women's Asian Cup), even saying the U.S. would give them asylum if Australia didn't. This is great, but as my colleague Joe Lancaster points out, it's "completely at odds with his position on [refugees and asylum] in nearly every other scenario," because the Trump administration has effectively dismantled the asylum process.
- Speaking of Iran, the White House social media team put out a video of bombs exploding (in Iran, I'm left to assume) interspersed with a bunch of big football hits.
- Sens. Eric Schmitt (R–Mo.) and Maria Cantwell (D–Wash.) have a bill that would give college sports an antitrust exemption, allowing conferences to pool their TV rights together.
- A bar owner in Boston is in trouble with the city bureaucracy for hosting a late-night party for some Patriots' players after they won the AFC Championship Game.
- Former Rangers and Yankees star Mark Teixeira won the Republican primary for a House of Representatives seat in Texas.
- The Enhanced Games have added a nonenhanced athlete for the 100 meter women's sprint.
- The road course map of IndyCar's Freedom 250 Grand Prix on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., has been released.
- Elsewhere in Reason: "Is it War?"
My Scalper Past
The story of how I got tickets to this summer's World Cup could start with the 2006 World Cup in Germany or the (semidisputed?) story of where my ancestors are from. But I'll save you decades of personal history about how I got into soccer and start in fall 2025.
FIFA's ticketing process for the 2026 World Cup has not been popular with most soccer fans. Even with the tournament having more games than ever, demand for tickets is through the roof, and prices (list and resale) are high for the most popular sporting event in the world. The cheapest possible ticket was $60, but tickets at that price were a small fraction of stadium seats. At one point, the cheapest ticket to the final match was $2,030. Given the mass disapproval, it was no surprise that politicians like now-Mayor Zohran Mamdani jumped at the chance to criticize FIFA over this (in a way that didn't make much sense).
To deal with huge demand for tickets, FIFA set up a complicated schedule of lotteries to determine which people would have the chance to buy tickets for the World Cup matches in Canada, Mexico, and 11 cities in the United States. I had no luck in the first lottery back in September. In the second one, I was fortunate enough to get picked and have the opportunity to buy tickets during a certain window—although I didn't realize this until 90 minutes after the window had already opened. After an hourlong queue (spent planning which games were feasible and most convenient to attend), a buffet of tickets to the U.S.-hosted matches was open to me.
But the cheap seats were sold out. Were my wife, brother, and a guest to be named later really up for spending hundreds of dollars, per person per game, for the once-in-a-generation opportunity to see the World Cup within a few hours drive of our home?
We decided to go for it.
This was all a few weeks before the teams were drawn into groups, so we didn't even know who was playing in these games. But we were committed to seeing the spectacle of the best soccer players in the world representing their countries on American soil.
We bought tickets to three matches: Group E in Philadelphia, Group L in Philadelphia, and a round of 32 match in Boston. Total cost on my credit card: a whopping $4,780, an average ticket price around $400 per person per game.
We eagerly awaited the draw on December 5, hoping some star-studded action would be coming our way. Alas, luck here was not in our favor: The schedule gave us Ivory Coast vs. Ecuador and Croatia vs. Ghana. (The round of 32 match will hopefully have Germany, but they'll have to win their group.)
With apologies to the fans of these fine nations, we were not especially interested in watching the Ivory Coast play Ecuador. I decided to sell the tickets for as much as possible. Normal people might think "who in the world would spend $1,000+ dollars on a lower-bowl ticket to see Ivory Coast play Ecuador in soccer in Philadelphia?" but that's how high tickets were going for when the FIFA Resale Marketplace opened in December. My initial selling price was too high, however, and I missed out on the most profitable sale possible. Every few days I'd check in and lower the price again, until I decided to set it and forget it for a while.
Lo and behold, in February the tickets sold. I had initially paid $445 each for those particular tickets. I sold them for $893 each (and then FIFA took a 15 percent cut). My initial payment of $4,780 for four tickets each to three games was down to $1,744 for four tickets each to two games.
Scalpers don't exactly have a good reputation, and I'm not a professional who does this kind of thing daily. But I think most people in my situation would have done something similar, and that there was nothing evil about it. Everyone involved in the transaction came out better than they had been (or else they wouldn't have voluntarily participated in it).
When I purchased all the tickets initially, the value to me was basically in the potential they had to be matchups I really wanted to see. When the matchups were announced, the value of tickets to the Ivory Coast vs. Ecuador match plummeted—to me. To other people, that value skyrocketed. There were people out there who now really wanted to be at that specific match and either didn't look into tickets before the matchup was announced or just weren't lucky in the ticket lottery like I was.
When my tickets were resold, the buyer valued them for at least $3,500 combined, or else they wouldn't have spent that much on them. If I hadn't been allowed to sell the tickets for a profit, I probably would have made my way up to Philadelphia for the game and had a perfectly nice time. But in selling them for more than I paid, my moderate interest in seeing the Ivory Coast play Ecuador has (presumably) been replaced by someone so passionate and excited about it that they were willing to spend that much. I got $3,000 back from FIFA, who took $500 for connecting an anonymous seller (me) with some anonymous buyer.
Everyone got what they wanted. I don't think there was anything evil about it.
Paying for It
My apologies to the fantastic Reason comedy team. In February they put out a hilarious and educational video about stadium subsidies, and I neglected to share it until now. Did you know over the last 50 years American and Canadian taxpayers have spent over $33 billion on stadiums? Did you know the Raiders are the January 6 of the NFL?
Now you know both. Enjoy!
Replay of the Week
A marathon is 26.2 miles and it came down to the final step? Absolutely insane.
Holy smokes….incredible finish at LA Marathon today by American Nathan Martin coming from behind to catch and beat Kenyan Michael Kamari at the finish line pic.twitter.com/hYk1jxsqBk
— Wu Tang is for the Children (@WUTangKids) March 9, 2026
That's all for this week. Enjoy watching the real game of the weekend, Michigan against Notre Dame in the Big Ten men's hockey tournament (7 p.m. on Wednesday on Big Ten Plus).