More than 3,500 tickets were still available on FIFA's primary portal Thursday evening for the United States' June 12 World Cup opener against Paraguay at SoFi Stadium near Los Angeles, and more than 6,500 more were listed on the tournament's resale platform. That left more than 10,000 tickets in play for a match that was supposed to be one of the early drawcards of the 2026 World Cup.
The game matters now because it sits at the front of the tournament calendar and because the sales picture is being watched as a test of demand for marquee U.S. matches two weeks before the 2026 World Cup begins. Scott Strazzante's Getty Images photo of one of the gates at SoFi Stadium captured the scale of the venue, which will hold around 69,650 people for World Cup matches, and the remaining inventory showed that a high-profile opener has not moved at the pace FIFA expected at current prices.
FIFA has been selling tickets for the U.S. opener since last October, charging $2,735 for Category 1 seats, $1,940 for Category 2 and $1,120 for Category 3. A document dated April 10 listed 40,934 tickets purchased for the U.S. match, while 50,661 were listed for Iran-New Zealand at the same venue three days later. On May 7, FIFA added thousands of new U.S.-Paraguay tickets to its portal, a sign that the first wave of sales had not cleared the market in the way organizers likely hoped.
That gap matters because the opener was billed as one of the most attractive games on the schedule, yet many tickets were also showing up on FIFA's resale platform and third-party sites below face value, some for less than half of FIFA's prices even after fees and taxes. FIFA has been criticized and investigated for its ticketing practices, and the latest inventory suggests the problem is not just perception: at least for now, the market is pushing back on one of the tournament's showcase matches.
FIFA continues to release tickets in batches, as it has for most or all World Cup matches through April and May, but the open question is whether it can still fill SoFi Stadium without cutting prices or leaning on another late release. If sales keep crawling at this pace, the June 12 opener will become a case study in how hard it is to sell prestige when the opening price is too high.
