#secondary-ticket-market

#secondary-ticket-market

FIFA holds a monopoly over ticket sales for the 2026 World Cup and has used that power to impose conditions on fans that would never be acceptable in a competitive market.

For millions of soccer fans, buying World Cup tickets has been an ordeal. My friends and I had signed up for updates from soccer's governing body, FIFA, and their emails about how to buy tickets felt a bit like receiving the fine print of an insurance policy in monthly digests. First there was a presale—but it was sponsored by Visa and only for people with Visa cards, and it was a lottery.

Today, the concert ticket industry is broken, in fact the concert industry itself is broken. It is controlled by a monopolist. It is controlled by Live Nation. Ticketmaster keeps more in fees than competitors such as AXS, according to an expert's estimate cited by Jonathan Hatch, an attorney for New York state.

Before you read any of this, use this article for entertainment purposes because it discusses risky gambling in a hedge against buying tickets to see your Washington Nationals. This idea came from Twitter/X's, Crabcakes&Football, an account that frequently gets salty about the Nats. And that account certainly isn't alone in the growing pessimism. A discussion with constant curmudgeon, @dclandofnerds, led to an X.com discussion (see below) that led to this article.

So another word about tickets. They did finally announce single-game tickets were going on sale, but only for games though June. It's not enough to keep season plans limited to those requiring fans to buy more tickets than they can use, feeding the secondary markets which the Mets also get a cut of, but "make-your-own-plan" fans like me who've reliably occupied seats for decades,

When new stock is added to the site, it very quickly collapses under the weight of incoming traffic, leading to error messages or queues that never resolve. Any who do manage to get in before the site goes down are limited by strict purchase restrictions, except of course for those running the bots that are able to scoop up the stock in milliseconds.

Selling out a venue such as London's O2 Arena used to be considered a high point of an artist's career. Now, selling out just one night there might seem a bit underwhelming. Raye and Olivia Dean will play six nights apiece at the 20,000-capacity hall this year; Dave is playing four, Ariana Grande is playing a whopping 10. Harry Styles, never one to be outdone, last month announced a staggering 30 dates at New York's Madison Square Garden,

The wait is over: BTS are back, and their upcoming reunion tour will be their biggest outing yet. After completing their mandatory military service and spending four years away from the stage as a full group, the K-Pop superstars announced their 2026-2027 world tour spanning 79 shows across 34 regions. The ARMY Membership presale has wrapped up, and as expected, tickets flew off the virtual shelves in minutes.