World Cup fans face last-minute StubHub ticket cancellations
StubHub users said World Cup tickets vanished hours before kickoff, and one fan paid Cdn$11,380 only to be left outside the stadium. A federal lawsuit now seeks at least $6.5 million.
At the gate, fans who bought World Cup seats on StubHub were turned away after last-minute cancellations, leaving some with flights, hotels and thousands of dollars in losses. The complaints include thousands of buyers saying their tickets never arrived or were pulled hours before kickoff.
The dispute reached Manhattan federal court on July 1, when fans filed a proposed class-action lawsuit seeking at least $6.5 million in damages. The cancellations affected thousands of tickets hours before game time, and one fan paid Cdn$11,380 for premium seats only to end up outside the stadium. Jeff Ripley spent $4,600 US and called the experience “like a situation of fraud.”
StubHub operates as a technology platform and does not own, possess or sell tickets. The company has blamed FIFA’s ticketing infrastructure for transfer failures across resale platforms. FIFA rejects that explanation and cannot guarantee tickets bought through third-party resale sites. FIFA’s official resale and exchange marketplace is the only channel that can reliably handle World Cup ticket transfers for tickets originally bought through FIFA.com/tickets.
That official marketplace, which launched in September 2025 and reopened in April 2026, charges a combined 30% fee, split evenly between buyer and seller. The higher cost pushed some fans toward cheaper third-party resale sites, even as those sites carried the risk of cancellations and invalid transfers at the gate.
The fallout has drawn calls for investigations by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and state and provincial authorities, including Washington state and British Columbia. British Columbia Attorney General Niki Sharma’s office is investigating StubHub over complaints tied to World Cup resale tickets.
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