FIFA Ticket Pricing Amplifies Neoliberalism’s Takedown Of World Soccer

LUSAIL CITY, QATAR - DECEMBER 18: A fan holds a banner asking for a ticket outside the stadium prior to the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 Final match between Argentina and France at Lusail Stadium on December 18, 2022 in Lusail City, Qatar. (Photo by Robert Cianflone/Getty Images)

Getty Images

At this summer’s World Cup, football’s global governing body – the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) – will be using dynamic ticket pricing, the first time it has used this strategy at the planet’s biggest soccer tournament.

Dynamic ticketing involves prices fluctuating in real-time based on market demand, supply, and other external factors.

Instead of a centrally set, fixed price, the cost of a seat changes - sometimes by the hour – in response to what people are willing to pay at that exact moment.

It is enabled by digital technology which gathers, processes and then applies the outcomes of data trends meaning that market forces rather than FIFA set ticket prices.

Don’t be surprised to see fans at the tournament glued to their mobile phones as they wait for ticket prices to dip, prompting an online scramble to gain entry to a much coveted national team game.

Ticket prices driving FIFA revenues

FIFA and its president - Gianni Infantino - see dynamic ticket pricing as an important reform that will generate increased revenues for world football.

Indeed, it is believed that thirty percent from each ticket sale will go directly to the governing body, the overall outcome of which may see FIFA generating almost $3 billion from this source alone.

There is also an argument that dynamic ticketing prevents scalpers (known in the U.K. as touts) from being able to operate a secondary market for match tickets, though the counter argument to this is that bots and speculators will take their place.

The bigger current outcry is, however, that FIFA’s new ticketing regime is driving prices upwards making tickets unaffordable for many fans, transforming the world’s most important soccer tournament into a two-tier, gentrified commodity.

As ticket prices to big games have spiralled (it is being reported that some tickets are being sold for $2.3 million each) and FIFA looks to harvest cash, it is looking likely that the socio-demographics of some games will be considerably different from those that world soccer is used to.

The gentrification of soccer

Fans and critics are fearful of their favourite game becoming an exclusive enclave of corporate customers middle class consumers, rather than the domain of working-class communities from which the sport originally emerged.

Despite the global outcry, many U.S. sports fans are already used to dynamic ticket pricing as it is often used as a ticketing strategy in the NBA, NFL and MLB – in fact, it was the latter’s San Francisco Giants that first employed dynamic ticket pricing in 2009

It is a free market solution to ticket pricing and sales, rather than an interventionist one, and is the essence of American domestic sport which constitutes the biggest such domestic market in the world and sets trends that others commonly follow.

Though millions of fans may baulk at this year’s World Cup ticket prices, it is important to remember that dynamic ticketing will in future almost certainly become the norm.

Soccer in an age of neoliberalism

This will be a victory for a neoliberal conception of soccer, as the creep of U.S. business and commerce continues unabated across the world embracing everything from who owns clubs and why, to the private corporations that acquire and commercialise broadcasting rights.

Neoliberalism emphasizes the value of free-market competition and is often characterized by the belief that open markets and private enterprise are the most efficient ways to organize society and promote economic growth.

Individuals are at the heart of neoliberalism, based upon a belief that each person is an independent, rational actor who should have the freedom to pursue their own interests without interference.

These individuals are architects of their own success (or failure), their rights and freedoms come before the needs of the collective, and they make logical decisions to maximize their own well-being.

This is anathema to many soccer fans worldwide who believe that the right to freely watch national team football is a public good warranting unfettered access to the sport.

Cafes, bars and fan zones across the world are normally testament to the shared experiences of citizens who coalesce around their teams and national heroes, which helps build social cohesion and a sense of collective identity.

But as neoliberal ideologue and former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher once noted, “There is no such thing as society, there are individual men and women.”

Neoliberalism’s triumph?

The principles of social democracy and centralised state planning aren’t important in neoliberalism where ability to pay, not communal identity or well-being , is the basis for access to the likes of World Cup match tickets.

It would be easy to dismiss the current controversy surrounding dynamic ticket pricing and the World Cup as being part of the usual pre-tournament scrutiny of the world’s biggest sporting event.

Instead, world soccer is on the cusp of making a full transition from one’s birth right and source of nation pride to fully becoming a commodity that is traded in markets for the purposes of commercial return.

This has been a long-time coming, fans have sensed the trend for years, but at this year’s tournament it is becoming clearer than ever that money and its neoliberal guardians are nowadays soccer’s biggest winners.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com