“Meeting professionals don’t typically know how to get FIFA tickets,” says Marc Matthews, founder and CEO of Pulse Experiential Travel, a strategic fulfillment partner to the incentive loyalty and meetings and events industry in North America. “It’s not a simple thing.”
Although prospective in-person spectators can see FIFA matches and the cities in which they’ll play, the organization does not have a box office or a Ticketmaster-like website to grab tickets. “It’s very difficult for planners to find the actual tickets they can offer their clients with any sort of assurance,” Matthews says. “To get FIFA tickets, you have to have an account set up with FIFA and enter a lottery, and you’re only able to get four tickets per match.”
This period, called the Random Selection Draw phase, can result in either a successful (meaning fans will receive tickets to every game they applied for) or partially successful application (fans received tickets to some, but not all, of the games to which they applied).
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After this lottery phase, FIFA will open a Last-Minute Sales phase in early April, which will be allocated on a first-come, first-serve basis, in addition to running its own resale/exchange marketplace.
Matthews’ operation—which, along with soccer, deals in football, golf, basketball and even horse racing—allows corporate clients to order far more than four tickets per match, with clients ordering upwards of 30 tickets at a time. For meeting professionals who don’t normally deal in large-scale international sports events, Matthews eases that process.
There are four categories of tickets: sponsored tickets, category one, category two and category three/four, the last of which are combined due to scarcity. “If you look at a seating chart for a World Cup venue, there’s a very small fraction of tickets that are actually category four,” Matthews says.
The Most Popular Locations
According to FIFA, the five games that had the highest number of ticket requests are as follows:
- Colombia vs. Portugal—June 27 in Miami
- Mexico vs. South Korea—June 18 in Guadalajara
- The final (teams TBD)—July 19 in New York/New Jersey
- Mexico vs. South Africa (tournament’s opening match)—June 11 in Mexico City
- Round of 32 match (teams TBD)—July 2 in Toronto
Beyond the highest number of tickets sold, Matthews names a few other U.S. cities that are of heightened interest. “Dallas is very prevalent. Atlanta has semi-final matches, so there’s a lot of interest in that area as well,” he says. “Really, any city that’s going to have a Team USA match, such as Seattle on June 19th, is extremely popular.”
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FIFA and Experiencing the City
Matthews went on to highlight the importance convenience and proximity have in shaping a group’s experience around FIFA. “To have a group go to Seattle, where you have great hotels, great facilities, great entertainment, dining options, all within a half mile of the stadium; they can walk to the stadium if they want to. That sort of convenience you don’t have in L.A., you don’t have in New York.”
When looking at large-scale events, Matthews looks at the entire experience beyond the event itself, from accommodations to entertainment that may be around the stadium. Although the sports event is the highlight, it’s only a fraction of the time spent in the host city.
“How are they going to manage those transfers and the accommodations the rest of the weekend?” he asks. “The hotels [in FIFA host cities] are all three-night minimum. The match is for just a day, a couple of hours in the afternoon. What are you going to do for the rest of the time? Where are you going to have your dinners? Where are you going to have your entertainment? Where are you going to have your networking opportunities to really make the weekend special? FIFA is not giving these tickets away, so it’s a good investment for these corporations to invest in.”
