The Athletic FC

Welcome to the Athletic FC podcast with me, Ayo Aikimuelere.

The World Cup is just four weeks away.

From tickets to hotels, broadcast agreements to squads, there's still a lot to sort out.

But are FIFA exploiting fans?

Joining us for this one, from New York, we have Adam Crafton, Henry Bushnell in Washington, D.C.,

and also in the north of England. We've got Matt Slater as well. Good to have you with this,

gents. So one month ago, we all checked in ahead of the World Cup.

One of the big topics we got into was the cost of the tournament, especially around tickets.

So, Henry, this week, you've been reporting on a new category by FIFA when it comes to ticket allocation.

Can you just break that down for us?

Yeah, so I think how the story has changed over the past month, it was really last month that all this came to the fore,

is that it went from just a pricing controversy to a ticket sales practices controversy and how

FIFA has gone about this and how they're really going to incredible lengths to try to milk as much money

out of this World Cup as possible. And basically the latest controversy beyond pricing is so that,

you know, they sold tickets like they always do like the International Olympic Committee and

Olympic organizers always do like UEFA do for the Euros in categories. And then recently they converted, you know, somebody who bought a category

one ticket that was converted to a specific seat. Americans aren't used to this category system.

They're used to buying specific seats and specific sections and rows in a stadium.

And I think FIFA, there were two problems with how FIFA portrayed this.

They showed ticket buyers these maps that supposedly, you know, category one

corresponded to, you know, these specific sections in a stadium.

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