Most fans who attended Friday’s World Cup game between the United States and Australia at Seattle Stadium paid more than $1,447 just to get in, with some resale tickets reaching up to $12,000. But thanks to a little-known federation ticketing program that has proven to be one of the smartest moves in world football administration, a handful of lucky Australian supporters were able to watch the same World Cup matches for a fraction of the price.
One fan, who flew all the way from Sydney for the game, paid just $250 for a ticket through Football Australia’s supporter allocation. This comes after some seats were left empty at the start of the tournament due to unrealistic ticket prices. By the standards of the resale market surrounding this game, this is an extraordinary deal. Surrounded by a raucous crowd outside Seattle Stadium, fans visibly felt how lucky they were.
“I heard there were some for about $1,950 to about $3,000 on the secondary market, so I was very lucky,” he told Mirror US Sports. Our soccer federation has a specific number of tickets available for its own supporters, so I managed to get mine for $250. It was a very good deal,” said an excited fan.
Another fan spoke to Mirror US Sports before the game and claimed to have paid just $200 to attend, which was less than most fans. The mechanism behind the ticket is Football Australia’s FA+ membership program. The program costs $99 per year and allows members to vote on the maximum allocation of World Cup tickets that FIFA distributes to each participating nation.
This allocation equates to 8% of the stadium capacity available for sale per match, meaning that for a match at Seattle’s 69,000-capacity ground, Football Australia will receive approximately 552 tickets to distribute to its own supporters.
Within this allocation, about 10 percent of seats fall into the “Supporter Entry Tier,” the cheapest tier, ranging from $90 to $250. FIFA agreed to make this tier available following global backlash to the tournament’s original pricing.
