The beautiful game is getting ugly for the corporate suits at Fifa. Word from Zurich suggests the global football governing body is now in the crosshairs of UK consumer watchdogs over the pricing of World Cup tickets. For those of us who remember when a match ticket cost less than a decent bottle of claret, this feels like the final whistle on affordable live sport.
The complaint, backed by a coalition of fan groups, argues that Fifa’s pricing strategy amounts to little more than legalised ticket touting. They have a point. We are talking about a monopoly supplier charging whatever the market will bear for a product with zero elasticity.
Fifa might as well be printing money. But let us not get carried away with moral outrage. The real issue here is about market failure and the lack of consumer protection in the secondary market.
Tickets for the Qatar World Cup were being flogged for ten times face value on resale sites. That is not capitalism. That is rent-seeking of the highest order.
The usual suspects will blame the touts. I blame the regulator. The Competition and Markets Authority has been asleep at the wheel for years.
Now they are being dragged into the spotlight by angry fans who have finally realised they have been played for mugs. The question is whether the investigation will lead to price caps or simply a slap on the wrist. My bet is on the latter.
Fifa is too big to fail and too powerful to care. But the optics are dreadful. A £60 ticket for a group stage match, when the average punter is struggling with the cost of living crisis, is tone deaf.
The Treasury should be watching this closely. If Fifa can get away with it, what is to stop other industries from following suit? The Premier League must be nervous.
Their own pricing model is not far off. Expect a lot of hand-wringing and very little action. In the meantime, fans will continue to be priced out of the game they love.
That is the bottom line.
