Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
World Cup soccer balls next to a person looking at their watch
Selling World Cup tickets through FIFA’s official marketplace was supposed to be the safe option for fans who could no longer attend. More than two months after the tournament ended, some sellers are instead learning that “official and secure” apparently does not always mean “your $15,000 will arrive anytime soon.”
Brooklyn resident Arik Shalmiyev says he is still waiting on more than $15,000 from three World Cup ticket sales, including a pair of quarterfinal seats in Kansas City that netted him more than $10,000 after fees. He is one of multiple sellers who told Front Office Sports they remain unpaid while receiving conflicting explanations from FIFA customer service.
FIFA’s 60-Day Window Has Become More Of A Suggestion
The rules were straightforward enough.
FIFA’s resale policy said sellers would receive their money within 60 calendar days of a successful resale, assuming all required payment information had been submitted.
FIFA also took a 15% fee from sellers and another 15% from buyers, so the governing body was getting paid on both ends of transactions that some fans are now spending months trying to complete.
Shalmiyev says FIFA has blamed problems with his bank account despite previously sending other refunds to both that bank account and his credit card.
“What do you mean this doesn’t work?” is basically the only logical response when an organization tells you it cannot send money to the same place where it already successfully sent money.
He is not alone.
A Texas seller named Bart McKay says he is still waiting on nearly $1,900 after four phone calls in which he was repeatedly told payment was coming within a week.
Robert Forster says he sold two tickets to see Lionel Messi and Argentina in Dallas for more than $3,000 and has sent FIFA 36 emails since late August. Thirty. Six.
Some Fans Were Told The Money Was Sent—Then Never Got It
Forster says FIFA emailed him twice claiming the payment had been processed, but he still had no money or wire details.
Another seller, Chaun Basile of Toronto, says the same thing happened while she waits on roughly $5,000 from two semifinal tickets.
FIFA told Front Office Sports that it is continuing to issue eligible payments and that a “limited number” of transactions require manual review, additional verification, or alternative banking arrangements because money could not be returned through the original payment method.
That explanation makes sense for some individual cases.
It is considerably less comforting when you are the person repeatedly checking a bank account for five figures.
The marketplace was explicitly promoted as FIFA’s official channel to protect fans from unauthorized resale problems. Sellers understandably expected that choosing the official platform meant avoiding the kind of payment headaches normally associated with handing expensive tickets to a stranger online.
Instead, some people successfully sold their tickets, watched the World Cup finish on July 19 and are still trying to collect in late September.