Court orders FIFA to change World Cup ticketing practices ahead of final

FIFA has been hit with a court injunction over its ticketing practices just days before the conclusion of the 2026 World Cup.

This week, a court in Frankfurt, Germany ordered soccer’s global governing body to stop “facilitating ticket sales” in ways that the petitioner—European online ticket resale platform Ticombo—labelled “manipulative.”

The preliminary injunction was issued under threat of a fine of up to €250,000 ($287,000) per violation or “imprisonment for up to six months”—levelled against FIFA President Gianni Infantino as well as Secretary General Mattias Grafström.

“Ticombo initiated this legal action to establish that transparency, fairness, and consumer rights must remain central standards in the ticketing industry, including for the world’s largest sporting events,” the Berlin-based company said in a statement on Tuesday.

“We take consumer protection and transparency very seriously and believe that all players must abide by the same rules,” Marçal Gutiérrez, legal counsel for Ticombo, told Newsweek. “This is why we took action.”

FIFA has not responded to the court order and did not attend the proceedings, The Guardian reports. Newsweek has contacted FIFA via email for comment.

FIFA’s Ticketing Practices Under Scrutiny

This year’s World Cup—which concludes Sunday when Argentina take on Spain in the final at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey—has been marred by concerns over high ticket prices and a lack of transparency from FIFA around its ticketing practices.

FIFA has said that the high levels of interest in the tournament are the primary reason for higher prices at the 2026 competition, though these have nevertheless drawn criticism from politicians, led to lawsuits from fans as well as investigations by host-city officials.

In late May, New York Attorney General Letitia James and New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport subpoenaed FIFA as part of a joint probe into its World Cup ticketing system. Davenport accused FIFA of turning the ticket-purchasing process into “gauntlet of confusion, fake scarcity and impossibly high prices.”

“Recent press reports indicate that fans may have been misled about the locations of the seats they were purchasing, and FIFA’s public statements and ticket releases may have contributed to soaring prices,” an announcement from the New York AG’s office read.

Davenport accused FIFA of turning the ticket-purchasing process into “gauntlet of confusion, fake scarcity and impossibly high prices.” Samuel A.A. Levine, the commissioner of New York City’s Department of Consumer and Worker Protection said that, in doing so, FIFA may have violated U.S. consumer protection laws.

In the latest complaint, Ticombo alleged that FIFA failed to disclose the “identity and address of commercial sellers” on its secondary, resale market.

“While FIFA has marketed its platform as a fair ‘fan-to-fan’ exchange, it systematically concealed the identity and any possible trader status of its sellers,” the company said on Tuesday. “This opaque system would allow commercial entities to operate as undisclosed traders selling ticket allocations at heavily inflated prices.”

This is in addition to “a combination of manipulative design features” on its primary sales platform, such as “bait-and-switch pricing”—advertised costs increasing significant once customers went to the checkout.

Though the injunction only applies in Germany and came too late to meaningfully affect ticketing at the current competition, The Guardian reports that Ticombo will continue pressuring FIFA for change ahead of the 2030 tournament, which will primarily be hosted by Morocco, Portugal, and Spain.

Timcombo’s legal counsel told Newsweek it is “not seeking monetary compensation,” and that it hopes the ruling “will serve as a powerful reminder that all players in the ticketing industry, including major event organizers who try to control their own closed resale systems, must abide by the same rules of transparency, consumer protection and fair competition.

“We hope this will serve to change FIFA’s ticketing practices moving forward, and incentivize their compliance with applicable law.”