For fans who bought World Cup tickets months in advance on secondary marketplaces, gameday brought an email instead of seat confirmations. Some were told their tickets wouldn’t be delivered and were offered refunds or replacement tickets that came late—or not
Jeroen Boersma woke up the day before his June 13 World Cup match and expected the usual pregame check: a delivery email. a confirmation. a seat number. Instead. his inbox held a different message—his tickets from StubHub “wouldn’t be delivered.” The note came with a thumbs-up emoji and promised new tickets at no extra cost. But when Boersma clicked through to review his options, there was nothing to select. The only offer was a refund.
Boersma, 30, and his wife had already flown in from Denver. Like many buyers who assume they’ve secured seats months earlier, they had made plans around the expectation that the transaction meant admission. When his wife called to press for a solution, StubHub wouldn’t budge.
They accepted the refund and bought a new pair of tickets on TickPick for more than double the price they initially paid.
In the stadium, Boersma sat next to two men from Idaho who said they had gone through the exact same ordeal. “Luckily, I could afford the extra difference, but that still means that I’ve got to be very careful with my money the next two months or so,” he said.
Boersma’s story is part of a surge of complaints from World Cup fans whose tickets purchased on secondary marketplaces—where buyers and sellers are connected rather than tickets being guaranteed—have failed to arrive.
The experience has been especially brutal for people who have already spent on travel and hotels. Boersma said he felt the loss in the real world: “It’s just very sad. A lot of people are spending a lot of money on traveling, hotels, and that’s money they can’t get back.”
Ron Levy faced a similar hit. In Washington, he bought tickets to the World Cup round of 16 in October of last year to remove risk. Still. on June 12. he received a notice from StubHub that his tickets wouldn’t be delivered—even though the match was still scheduled for July 6. weeks away. Levy is reluctant to take a refund and said he is “holding out until the very last minute” in hopes of a resolution. But his faith is thin: he paid about $500 per ticket, and prices have now quadrupled.
In Dallas, Rozina Taguchi was still working through the fallout after her family traveled from Oklahoma to see a match last weekend. StubHub failed to deliver the tickets, and she went viral about the episode on TikTok while continuing to message the company representative to fix it.
StubHub escalated its effort to appease her step by step—first offering a 20% voucher on top of her refund. then asking whether there were other matches or events she would like to attend. Taguchi said she wants compensation for lost work hours. travel time. and emotional distress. though she also indicated that better tickets for Japan in later rounds might still be possible. Even then, she doesn’t feel secure. “We don’t really trust StubHub to give us new tickets at this point,” she said.
Others say they were left waiting on the promise of timely delivery. Jack Paillant. from Miami. bought three tickets in May for the Scotland-Haiti match in Boston and spent the hours before the game switching back and forth with SeatGeek’s chat support. A representative told him he would get tickets for the 9 pm game by noon on gameday. The time came and went without delivery and without a response.
Paillant is now negotiating with SeatGeek via email over his refund and other compensation. He said he still only wants to see Haiti play, but the uncertainty has made him hesitant to try again for one of the team’s other two matches. “It doesn’t seem like I’m going to make it,” he said.
A SeatGeek spokesperson said in an email that Paillant’s “letdown” “fell short” of the experience the company aims to provide. The spokesperson said SeatGeek apologized to Paillant and was working on a resolution. The spokesperson added that the company is investing resources in “monitoring World Cup orders and supporting fans attending matches.”.
The common thread behind these complaints is how secondary ticket marketplaces operate. Sites such as StubHub don’t sell tickets directly—like eBay or Facebook Marketplace, they connect buyers and sellers. That structure places the burden on sellers to deliver the tickets they list. and it can mean that buying doesn’t guarantee a ticket will actually show up. Many platforms also do not require sellers to upload tickets immediately or provide proof of purchase. In some cases, sellers are only required to hand over tickets by the day of the event.
In the middle of the tournament, where time is unforgiving, fans say the system can collapse when sellers either can’t deliver or never had tickets in the first place.
One potential culprit is “speculative ticketing. ” a term used for listings that are posted without the tickets on hand—what the article describes as “ghost ticketing.” In these cases. resellers list tickets on StubHub or SeatGeek that they don’t yet have. betting they will later find seats (often cheaper than the price they advertised) and send them along. Industry professionals say speculative tickets are responsible for a significant portion of “busted” orders—purchases that go unfulfilled—because sellers can’t deliver what they don’t have and often cancel close to gametime.
Evidence of the practice has appeared in past high-profile ticket markets. including Radiohead. Oasis. and Taylor Swift. where tickets have shown up on secondary marketplaces before initial on-sale dates or before seats were assigned. Sellers ultimately cancel and replace, and the damage lands on buyers.
Not every failure, however, is tied to speculative listings. A New York-area ticket broker. who spoke on the condition of anonymity. said venues sometimes change seats or make alterations that force resellers to cancel orders. With the World Cup already underway, the broker said that kind of explanation seems unlikely at this stage. Another possibility is that resellers monitor price spikes during the tournament. The broker described a scenario where sellers could cancel and relist to make more money—while stressing that “I delivered. because I’m not a jerk. ” when he sold tickets earlier.
Platforms say they penalize sellers who break orders. The article describes that sellers can be charged either 200% of the original ticket price or the replacement ticket amount. Brokers may also face higher fees from platforms on future sales. and repeated egregious behavior can lead to being barred from the website.
But the same mechanisms meant to deter bad behavior can also distort incentives. Resellers are supposed to deliver the same or better tickets. which can encourage speculators to list seats in the back rows of sections. That way, they may claim an “upgrade” if they manage to secure tickets only in the general area.
Buyers and sellers who spoke to the reporter also questioned how the penalty system benefits the platforms. When a seller breaks an order. the platform collects a penalty fee and. if a replacement ticket isn’t found. it offers a refund. The broker said the extra money doesn’t necessarily flow back to the buyer—it is kept by the platform.
A Florida ticket broker told the reporter that StubHub appears to punish sellers with fees without fully correcting the harm to buyers. “Just offering a refund is malpractice,” the broker said. “They are punishing the brokers who break orders, rightfully so, but aren’t doing right by their buyers.”
StubHub, for its part, says the failures are not speculative. A StubHub spokesperson said in an email that the tickets not being delivered to fans are not speculative and that FIFA’s technology is the cause. The spokesperson said StubHub loses money sourcing new tickets for jilted buyers and that extra penalty funds go to refunds. credits. and new tickets. The spokesperson added that StubHub is trying to provide new tickets to as many fans as possible and said it is “able to do so more each day.” The spokesperson also said StubHub is giving “clear guidelines” on prioritizing transfer via web.
The disputes come in the middle of a World Cup ticketing process that fans describe as complicated on multiple fronts. FIFA released tickets in waves and in categories, and it moved some seats around. Tickets were not assigned to specific matches when fans first bought them, and some fans received packages assigned to teams. The article says FIFA’s technology and app have been “wonky. ” that ticket transfers were slow. and that some transfers were restricted.
Still, for fans who bought through secondary marketplaces, the idea that the problem was “FIFA wasn’t good at this” doesn’t feel like enough. Many people turned to marketplaces like StubHub because they appeared to offer more reliable pathways than primary ticket sellers.
The ripple effects extend beyond the World Cup. The article reports that fans’ tickets for concerts and other sporting events have also “disappeared at the last minute.” One example cited is from Munich. where a person had Champions League tickets bought from Viagogo—owned by StubHub—canceled three hours before the match. That buyer also lost money on the refund due to exchange rates.
There have been operational signals, too. When fans call StubHub’s customer service hotline about World Cup tickets. the system prompts callers to press 1 if they’re reaching out about World Cup tickets. and then press 1 again if they’re calling about tickets that night—suggesting heavy volume of late-stage grievances.
Not every ending has been bleak. Jordan Feigenbaum. a 50-year-old New York dad. said he was devastated when he checked his email three days before the match and found a message from StubHub saying the tickets he had bought for his son’s 11th birthday back in December were no longer available. StubHub offered a refund and said it would kick in extra if he agreed to get his money back in StubHub credits.
When he called. Feigenbaum said a supervisor “reluctantly” told him the issue was that similar tickets on the StubHub website were too expensive to send his way. Feigenbaum kept refreshing the app anyway, and he eventually saw options to replace the tickets. He said the replacement was promptly applied to his account. He said he’s relieved not to disappoint his soccer-fanatic middle schooler and not to “eat the cost of the Philadelphia Airbnb” the family reserved.
Even with a successful resolution, Feigenbaum said the incident damaged trust. “I do still feel really strongly that StubHub. and all of them. but StubHub in particular. don’t do enough to protect ticket buyers. and that it ultimately erodes confidence in attending live events in general. ” he said. “I was lucky enough to have a happy ending, but I know that many more won’t get that satisfaction.”.
For fans in the middle of the tournament, the question has turned from who will qualify to whether the seats they paid for will exist when they need them most.
World Cup tickets StubHub SeatGeek TickPick secondary ticket marketplaces ghost ticketing FIFA technology order cancellations ticket delivery failures customer compensation