Up to 15,000 England supporters are expected to pack into Dallas Stadium on Wednesday for the Three Lions’ World Cup opener against Croatia, but the joy of a tournament on American soil has been overshadowed by ticket prices that fans say have made the tournament feel like the “people’s game” no longer.
England’s campaign begins six days after the tournament kicked off, and while the United Kingdom Football Policing Unit told BBC Sport that between 12,000 and 15,000 England fans are anticipated at each group stage fixture, many in Dallas have arrived without tickets — and some have seen hotel bookings fall through before they even set foot in the stadium.
The official England Supporters’ Travel Club sold its allocation of 4,022 tickets, and 89,000 World Cup tickets in total have been bought by fans from England covering matches across all 104 games. But the cost of getting into any of them has proved deeply contentious. Where Qatar’s group stage fixtures were priced at £68.50, £164.50 and £219, England’s opener against Croatia went on sale at £198, £373 and £523 — and that was before the secondary market took hold.
As of Tuesday evening, just 293 resale tickets remained listed on FIFA’s official resale site, which charges buyers an additional 15 per cent on top of the asking price. A category one ticket now starts at around £1,310. Category two and three tickets have risen sharply since April; what cost £874 two months ago now goes for £1,254, and a category three ticket that was £682 has risen to £1,311, according to BBC Sport.
Most controversially, a small number of tickets sold to England Supporters’ Travel Club members have appeared on FIFA’s resale platform at dramatically inflated prices. One “supporter standard” ticket was listed at £3,192 — adding FIFA’s fee brings it to £3,671, nearly ten times the £380 the original buyer paid. Another in the same category was listed at £1,178. “Supporter premier” tickets sold to the national association allocation were also listed at £1,898 and above, more than four times their £523 face value. To limit the resale of the cheapest £45 tickets, the FA delayed releasing them to digital wallets until Monday evening. BBC Sport has not seen any of those tickets appear for resale.
Among those in Dallas absorbing the cost was Michael, who was with a group of eight outside a bar on Tuesday. “We paid about £850 for a ticket each. That is a lot of money, you can get a season ticket for that,” he said. “I hear stories about the stadiums and it’s $20 a beer, and food is more than $30. It does feel like you are getting gouged. But it’s the World Cup. I just hope when it comes to 2030 we come back to normality, and things are a bit more sensible.”
Guy and James from Newcastle arrived on Saturday to discover their hotel reservation had been cancelled and their tickets had fallen through. “We’ve not got tickets but obviously we were still coming out,” James told BBC Sport. “We’ll go to fan zones, bars, and be with England fans.” Guy added: “We’re going to try to get some tickets but the hope is slim to none. We’d spend £400 to £500 if we could get them.”
Another supporter named Ian offered a bleaker assessment of what the costs mean for the sport’s future. “It is not going to be quite like what we had for the Euros back home or perhaps for South Africa. It’s a shame because it’s the people’s game and I feel like 80 to 90% of people are priced out of the games. I really hope it doesn’t set a precedent going forward.”
Germany in 2006 remains the high point for England fan attendance, with the UKFPU estimating 350,000 supporters made the short trip to attend games in stadia and fan parks. Just 4,000 are thought to have visited Qatar four years ago. Wednesday’s opener against Croatia is expected to fall somewhere between those extremes — though at these prices, the World Cup in America is shaping up to be a tournament many England fans can only experience from afar.
