Bina Ramroop spent $485 per ticket on StubHub for her grandson’s 13th birthday. She planned to take him to see Spain play Cape Verde at Atlanta Stadium. Instead she stood outside the gates for hours, stuck on the phone with StubHub while FIFA officials at the booth told her the same thing: not our problem.
StubHub eventually offered a refund. She took it, but she didn’t want it. “I wanted to go to the game,” she said. Her grandson Elijah tracked the score on his phone during the quiet train ride back to the suburbs. The game ended 0-0. He told her it was fine, they didn’t miss much.
She wasn’t alone. An Associated Press reporter counted more than a dozen fans in the same situation outside that match alone. Social media is full of similar stories: tickets bought months ago that never transferred, last-minute cancellations, and a runaround between FIFA and resale platforms that leaves nobody taking responsibility.
Who’s to Blame
StubHub points at FIFA. They say the organization’s ticketing app launched late, the transfer system is clunky, and the restrictions on when tickets can be moved are too tight. FIFA says tickets bought through its official site are guaranteed and that’s the only safe route.
Industry experts say it’s more complicated than that. Some of the problems are technical glitches — StubHub calls those “very, very rare.” But others are a familiar problem in the resale business: sellers listing tickets they don’t actually own yet.
Scott Friedman, who runs the Ticket Talk Network consultancy, says these speculators gamble that prices will drop closer to game day. Then they buy cheap and pocket the difference. But World Cup prices went up, not down. So those sellers either buy expensive tickets to fulfill orders or cancel and pay a penalty — typically 200% of the ticket price on StubHub.
“This is not new at all,” Friedman said. “This has been going on, but it’s making global news because it’s the World Cup.”
StubHub says they require proof of ownership before sellers can list. That’s their policy.
Fine Print and Broken Promises
StubHub’s FanProtect Guarantee promises replacement tickets or a refund. But the fine print says that’s at the company’s “sole discretion.” That means they can choose to give you your money back instead of finding you seats.
Pape Ndaw knows that one firsthand. He bought $550 tickets for him and his son to see Netherlands vs. Japan near their home in Dallas. Two days before the match, StubHub emailed him: “The seller can’t deliver your original tickets.” He took store credit instead of a refund, thinking he’d just buy replacements. But the cheapest last-minute tickets were going for over $1,500 each.
Telling his 17-year-old son was brutal. The kid had told all his friends he was going. “He literally cried,” Ndaw said. “I mean, he is a 17-year-old kid, but he cried.”
Michael McCann, a sports law expert at the University of New Hampshire, says that “sole discretion” language is clear enough that a buyer would face an uphill battle trying to challenge it under consumer protection laws.
One Family Made the Best of It
Patrick O’Neil traveled from North Carolina to Atlanta with his wife, son, and relatives. They bought five tickets for Spain-Cape Verde on StubHub. Only two transferred successfully. His 15-year-old son and an uncle used those. O’Neil, his wife, and another relative watched from a bar nearby.
After local media picked up the story, StubHub called and offered tickets to another game. The family already had tickets to a different match, so O’Neil and his wife asked StubHub to donate the replacement seats to Soccer in the Streets, a nonprofit that gets kids to games who otherwise couldn’t go. StubHub confirmed they’d do it.
“StubHub is not evil,” O’Neil said. “But they’re part of the whole system that makes it really hard for just normal kids and people who might want to see a match get to go.”
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