FIFA Hit by German Court Injunction over World Cup Ticketing Practices

A few days before the 2026 FIFA World Cup Final in East Rutherford, New Jersey, on July 19, FIFA was hit with an injunction by a court in Germany relating to its ticketing prices during the international soccer tournament.

According to The Guardian, the court in Frankfurt ordered soccer’s global governing body to “stop facilitating ticket sales” in ways that were “manipulative,” as labeled by Germany-based secondary ticket marketplace Ticombo, which had filed for a preliminary injunction. The platform had urged FIFA to be more transparent about its secondary ticketing sales by revealing the identities and addresses of commercial sellers, and the court has now ordered FIFA to oblige “in a timely manner.”

The newspaper further states that FIFA did not respond to the court order, which applies solely in Germany. It added that FIFA did not attend the court proceedings either, and Ticombo will likely now take the case to Switzerland, as that is where FIFA’s headquarters are located (in Zurich).

The news came out ahead of the Final of the 2026 FIFA World Cup, which was won by Spain over Argentina before a sellout crowd of 80,663. In the days leading up to the match, tickets on FIFA’s official ticketing platform had averaged around $6,000, while other third-party resale platforms were selling seats as high as $33,000.

Although the injunction was too late to impact this summer’s tournament, the marketplace wants to maintain its pressure on FIFA so that it alters its practices before the 2030 FIFA World Cup in Spain, Portugal, Morocco, Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina.

Ticombo also alleged that FIFA used a series of “manipulative design features” on its last-minute sales/exchange platform, such as bait-and-switch pricing (where prices rise sharply at the end of the checkout process), aggressive sales deadlines with six-minute countdowns, “book the best seat” functions which automatically select the most expensive available seat, and concealed pricing of ticket prices until the end of the booking process.

“This historic injunction is an important legal and public-interest step for football fans,” said a Ticombo spokesperson. “We initiated this legal action to establish that transparency, fairness, and consumer rights must remain central standards in the ticketing industry, including for the world’s largest sporting events.”

Ticketing Controversies

FIFA had already come under fire for its skyrocketing prices during the tournament, while fans also complained about being “misled” over the location of their seats. Utilizing dynamic/variable pricing for the first time at a FIFA World Cup caused ticket prices to fluctuate significantly, and FIFA also charged a 15 percent commission on each match ticket from both the seller and the buyer.

Following some of that backlash, FIFA did announce a cheaper category of tickets that were worth $60. However, those tickets were very scarce, accounting for no more than 0.5 percent of the total inventory of each stadium at World Cup matches.

In the weeks leading up to the tournament, New York and New Jersey had subpoenaed FIFA as part of an investigation into its ticketing practices for the World Cup. New York New Jersey Stadium (known as MetLife Stadium outside of FIFA events due to sponsorship regulations) will have hosted eight matches by the conclusion of the tournament, including the Final.

New York Attorney General Letitia James said that “no one should be manipulated into paying sky-high prices for seats,” while her New Jersey counterpart Jennifer Davenport added that FIFA had “turned buying a ticket into a gauntlet of confusion, fake scarcity and impossibly high prices.”

Ticombo’s Submissions

Accessible tickets were an increasingly prescient topic of conversation at this World Cup, with reports emerging that some fans with disabilities could have been paying 38 times more for accessible seats than in 2022, with some easy access tickets starting at $3,100. Speaking to SportsTravel last month, Ticombo Chief Operating Officer Peter Savovsky had called for added transparency about the costs of accessible match tickets and public transportation, to ensure “confidence, safety and dignity throughout the entire experience.”

FIFA announced late Sunday that more than 6.6 million fans had attended this year’s tournament, a new record for the event which this year expanded to 48 teams and was played in 16 different cities across North America.