Football is by far the most popular sport in the world, thus it should come as no surprise that over 150 million people put their names in the draw for a chance to buy one of the few million tickets to a match at this year's World Cup.While some will succeed in buying tickets at face value, the unlucky majority will have to rely on third-party resellers, many of whom are charging exponentially higher prices.The question now is how much people are really willing to pay, and whether the government should step in to set a cap on resale pricing.According to Vancouver-based economist Bryan Breguet, it's a simple case of supply and demand — and officials ought to stay on the sidelines."In the first round, the prices were too low," he told the Western Standard. "This is why they used dynamic pricing. They increased some matches right away — like after a few days — and then they really increased many of them after the draw in December."Breguet, who teaches at Langara College, noted that for certain Canada games at BC Place, category two tickets went from $500 to $700. "Despite this increase, we still see massive demand," he explained. "I'm not saying it's a low price, but I think compared to the demand that exists, it's fairly reasonable.".When asked about the high price of resale tickets on websites such as StubHub, Breguet warned against panicking prematurely."The problem is, we see the listed price, but we don't see if those tickets are actually sold," he said. "Just because somebody lists tickets for $20,000 doesn't mean he's selling them for $20,000, right? I think it's too early to really tell ... I cannot imagine there is a large activity on this resale market yet because people are still trying to get tickets through the normal system. It's only when all those tickets are sold, and if you're really desperate, where we're gonna see some prices going really, really wild, much more than now."Breguet went on to note that even if prices stay high, however, it's nobody's business but the seller and the buyer, arguing that "if somebody has too much money and this is what they want to do with it — I have a lot of objections with what rich people do with their money, but we don't prevent Jeff Bezos from spending millions and millions on a wedding in Venice and whatnot.".Resale prices vary greatly depending on the match and seat. For a prime spot to watch the opening game in Mexico City, for example, sellers are asking as much as $28,000 a pop, while watching Canada take on Switzerland from the nosebleeds at BC Place will set a buyer back $1,100."To me, the main point is, World Cup tickets are nowhere near essential, right?" he continued. "It's purely a luxury, it's a pleasure, it's entertainment. If you want to spend that much, why should I, or the government, prevent you? It's obscene, it's gross, I think you should rethink your life, but I don't see the point in preventing you from doing so."Breguet argued that in order to ensure those who actually care about the game have access to tickets, FIFA could have allocated more seats to specific groups, like long-time fans and supporters.."Ultimately they released some tickets, like $60, and the Canadian Soccer Association said, oh, they're going to go to to the Voyageurs, the fan club," he said. "I think this is fine and this is an acceptable way of making sure that some die-hard fans who possibly don't have the money cant still attend the games, but at the end of the day beyond, you know this little allocation to those supporters, the rest of those tickets — as an economist — I think willingness to pay is highly correlated with how much you care about this."Breguet went on to cite Taylor Swift's Eras Tour as an example of this principle in action."Her tickets were so cheap, the face value, that somebody like me, who's not a Swiftie, would try to get those tickets for like $50 or $100, and if I got them, I would just go," he said, "but me going means that there's a die-hard Swiftie that missed out, and she was ready to pay $1,000 - $2,000. My argument is this person being allowed to pay $2,000 to buy resale tickets is most likely optimal for everybody."Turning back to the World Cup, Breguet added, "I would rather the face value be $1,000 and have a 50% chance of getting those than the face value be $200, and then I'm competing with 10,000 people for those tickets."Despite his aversion to government intervention in the market, he admitted that it would be necessary to deal with organized "mass-buying" from scalpers using bots."If we can show that some resellers manage to get a quasi monopoly on this market, then we should intervene because I want competition," Breguet argued, "but I'm not convinced that this is what is happening."The final draw is set to take place in the coming weeks.
