Some match tickets for Euro 2028 in the UK and Ireland will be cheaper than a parking space at this summer’s World Cup in the USA, Canada and Mexico after Uefa committed to affordable pricing for their event in two years’ time.
According to reporting in The Times, the cheapest Euro 2028 tickets are set to cost less than £30 with Uefa having committed to ensuring 40 per cent of tickets are in the “most affordable categories”. Those brackets were €30 (£26) and €60 (£52) for Euro 2024 in Germany, with Uefa planning to keep prices at similar levels for the 2028 tournament.
The Times have reported that 15 per cent of tickets will be available for £30 or less and a further 25 per cent will cost £60 or less.
That means fans can buy two Euros tickets for around the same price as a parking space for a World Cup group stage match this summer, with the charge to park one car at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, near Dallas, being $75 (£57) for one particular clash.
Sky-high prices for the World Cup in North America have been repeatedly condemned by fan groups, with Fifa accused of a “monumental betrayal” in December when tickets were put on general sale, ranging from $140 (£106) for the cheapest group games to $8,680 (£6,564) for the final.
Fifa did start a minor climbdown following the initial uproar, compromising to the extent that 10 per cent of all allocations for qualified nations now involve tickets fixed at just $60 (£45) for every game.
However, those numbers are still seen as divisively low. England, for example, have 610 supporters with “top caps” – the fans who have hit a certain number of appearances to warrant priority treatment – but such a number is unlikely to be fully covered by the “newly introduced Supporter Entry Tier” at any individual match. It could mean one fan pays $480 (£363) if England go all the way to the final, and another – with identical caps – pays around $7,000 (£5,292), while the pricing for over 98 per cent of tickets for the tournament remains unchanged.
Last week, Football Supporters Europe (FSE) said it had joined with consumer group Euroconsumers to make a formal complaint with the European Commission over prices, calling Fifa’s ticketing policy “exploitative”, criticising the exorbitant face prices and the employment of “dynamic pricing” for the first time at a World Cup, which could see costs rise even further.
Fifa’s final ticket window for the World Cup opens on Wednesday (1 April), with additional tickets being made available for general purchase. It has already sold more than one million tickets between December and February, while Fifa president Gianni Infantino asserted in January that demand was so immense it equated to “1,000 years of World Cups at once,” with all 104 matches expected to be sold out.
For Euro 2028, Uefa are likely to introduce a premium category of seats to help increase overall revenue and the three million tickets for the tournament will start to go on sale following the draw for the finals in December 2027. Uefa, in perhaps a subtle dig at Fifa, has said it is committed to a “fair, transparent and fan-first ticketing process”.
The cheaper prices of many tickets means that fans who are successful in the ballot could be able to buy tickets for all seven of their teams’ matches, including the final, for as little as £325.
