They bought World Cup tickets months ago. Now they're out of luck.

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Coverage of the world's premier international soccer tournament

Getty Images; Tyler Le/BI

Fans spent hundreds of dollars to attend soccer's biggest event. Now they're out of luck.

Getty Images; Tyler Le/BI

Seeing his home country of the Netherlands in the World Cup has always been on Jeroen Boersma's bucket list. So back in December, he eagerly scooped up a pair of tickets on Stubhub to see them play in Dallas But six months later, the day before the June 13 match, he awoke to an unpleasant surprise: an email saying his tickets wouldn't be delivered. The message from Stubhub, accompanied by a little thumbs-up emoji, promised to find him new tickets at no extra cost, but when he clicked through to supposedly review his options, he didn't have any. The only thing the ticketing platform was offering was a refund.

His wife got on the phone to try to plead the couple's case — after all, they'd already flown in from Denver, and there were plenty of tickets to the game listed on StubHub's website, albeit at higher prices. But the company wouldn't budge. The couple ultimately took the refund and bought a new pair of tickets on TickPick for more than double the price they'd originally paid. In the stadium, they sat next to two guys from Idaho who'd been through the exact same ordeal.

"Luckily, I could afford the extra difference, but that still means that I've got to be very careful with my money the next two months or so," Boersma, 30, says.

Many World Cup fans are experiencing the same rude awakening, learning tickets they thought they secured months ago aren't coming through. It's the unfortunate underbelly of secondary marketplaces such as StubHub, SeatGeek, and Vivid Seats: buying a ticket doesn't guarantee you'll get one. It leaves customers in the lurch, wondering whether the seller even had the tickets in the first place, or perhaps found a more lucrative buyer.

"It's just very sad," Boersma says. "A lot of people are spending a lot of money on traveling, hotels, and that's money they can't get back."

The internet is awash with stories from frustrated fans whose stories rhyme with Boersma's — I've heard from nearly a dozen of them myself.

Ron Levy, in Washington, thought buying tickets to the World Cup round of 16 in October of last year would eliminate risk. But on June 12, he got a notice from Stubhub that his tickets wouldn't be delivered, even though the match, scheduled for July 6, was still weeks away. He's reluctant to take a refund, telling me he's "holding out until the very last minute" in hopes of a resolution. But he doesn't have a lot of faith: He paid about $500 per ticket, and prices have now quadrupled.

"That's why I bought them so early on," he says.

Rozina Taguchi is still haggling with StubHub over tickets the platform failed to deliver after her family traveled from Oklahoma to Dallas last weekend. She went viral about the episode on TikTok and has continued messaging with a company representative about how to rectify the situation. StubHub has escalated its efforts to appease her — first offering a 20% voucher on top of her refund, then asking whether there are other matches or events she'd be interested in attending. She wants financial compensation for lost work hours, travel time, and emotional distress, though perhaps really amazing Japan tickets in later rounds would do. Even then, it makes her nervous. "We don't really trust StubHub to give us new tickets at this point," she says.

While most complaints I've heard are about StubHub, other platforms are having problems, too. Jack Paillant, from Miami, spent the hours leading up to the Scotland-Haiti match he'd flown to Boston to see going back and forth with SeatGeek's chat support. He purchased his trio of tickets in May, and a representative told him he'd get tickets for the 9 pm game by noon on gameday. That time came and went, and he never heard back or got the tickets. He's now negotiating with SeatGeek via email over his refund and other compensation. He still just wishes he'd gotten to see Haiti play, but he's afraid to give it another go for one of the team's other two matches.

"It doesn't seem like I'm going to make it," he says.

A SeatGeek spokesperson said in an email that Paillant's letdown "fell short" of the experience the company aims to provide and said they'd apologized to him and were working on a resolution. "We continue to invest significant resources in monitoring World Cup orders and supporting fans attending matches," they said.

Countless World Cup fans are discovering that their tickets have gone poof, and they're left scrambling to decide whether to buy new, pricier ones or simply give up on their World Cup dreams. They're asking themselves how this could happen, since many people don't realize it's even a possibility.

The answer lies in the peculiar structure of secondary ticket marketplaces. Sites such as StubHub don't actually sell tickets, much like eBay or Facebook Marketplace, they just connect buyers and sellers. This setup relies on sellers to come through with the tickets they say they have, essentially rendering it an honor system. Companies often don't require sellers to upload their tickets immediately or provide proof of purchase. Many platforms give sellers until the day of the event to hand over the tickets.

It's impossible to know the explanation for each individual situation, but one potential culprit is speculative ticketing, which I coined "ghost ticketing" last year. In these scenarios, resellers list tickets on StubHub or SeatGeek that they don't yet have, hoping they'll eventually secure them (for a lower price than they offered) and send them along.

It's hard to know how widespread speculative ticketing is, but the evidence would suggest it's not uncommon. Acts such as Radiohead, Oasis, and Taylor Swift have dealt with the issue. Tickets regularly pop up on secondary marketplaces before the initial on-sale or before seats for the event have been assigned. Ticketing and events industry professionals say that speculative tickets are responsible for a significant portion of "busted" orders, parlance for purchases that go unfulfilled. Sellers can't deliver tickets they don't have and eventually cancel them, often at the last minute.

There could be other explanations, albeit not necessarily heartening ones. One New York-area ticket broker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, tells me that sometimes venues change seats or make other alterations that force resellers to cancel orders. Given that the World Cup is already underway, he thinks that's unlikely at this juncture. It could also be the case that resellers are seeing how high prices are now, so they're canceling their orders and relisting their tickets to make more money. Tickets he sold a while back are now going for three or four times what he got for them, "but I delivered, because I'm not a jerk," he says.

Of course, the business of secondary marketplaces is predicated on tickets being delivered as promised, and they are supposed to have mechanisms in place to ensure that happens.

When a seller breaks an order, they're penalized. They are forewarned that if they drop a sale, they'll be charged either 200% of the original ticket's price or the replacement ticket's amount. Brokers may also face higher fees from platforms on future sales, and if they're egregious enough, they'll be barred from the website.

These mechanisms are supposed to deter bad behavior, but they also distort it. Resellers are supposed to deliver the same or better tickets to buyers, so speculators often list tickets in the back rows of sections, so that as long as they get tickets in the general area, they can say it's an "upgrade." (If you're worried you might be buying ghost tickets, this is a pretty good tell.)

Sellers and buyers I spoke to also raised questions about how this penalty system ends up benefiting the platforms. When StubHub collects the penalty fee from the seller and doesn't find a replacement ticket, they offer a refund, but don't send the extra cash to the down-and-out buyer, they keep it.

One Florida ticket broker tells me that StubHub seems to be taking advantage of its middleman position by punishing sellers with fees without fully rectifying the situation for buyers. "Just offering a refund is malpractice," the broker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, says. "They are punishing the brokers who break orders, rightfully so, but aren't doing right by their buyers."

A StubHub spokesperson said in an email that the tickets not being delivered to fans are not speculative and that FIFA's technology is the cause of fans' problems. They said they lose money sourcing new tickets for jilted buyers, and extra penalty funds go to refunds, credits, and new tickets. "We are trying to provide new tickets to as many fans as possible, and are able to do so more each day. We're giving clear guidelines on prioritizing transfer via web. We want to help fans get to the World Cup, bottom line," they said.

There's no denying that World Cup ticket sales have been messy. FIFA released tickets in waves and in categories, and it moved some seats around. Tickets weren't assigned to specific matches when fans first bought them, and some fans got packages assigned to teams. FIFA's technology and app have been wonky. Ticket transfers have been slow, and some are restricted.

Still, for exasperated fans, "FIFA wasn't good at this" feels like an insufficient response. They went through secondary marketplaces that position themselves as trusted platforms — and often appear above primary ticket sellers in search results — because they didn't want to deal with iffy situations. And this isn't just a World Cup problem — I've spoken with fans whose tickets to concerts and other sporting events have disappeared at the last minute. I heard from one person who was in Munich when his Champions League tickets bought from Viagogo — owned by StubHub — were canceled three hours before the match. He even lost money on the refund because of exchange rates.

Platforms such as StubHub insist they don't allow for speculative ticketing and say they're doing everything they can to do right by their customers. But the sheer volume of complaints indicates that this issue has gotten out of hand, and many fans are scrambling. When you call StubHub's customer service hotline, it almost immediately prompts you to press 1 if you're reaching out about World Cup tickets, and it next prompts you to press 1 again if you're calling about tickets that night. It suggests the company is fielding a significant volume of World Cup-related grievances.

Some lucky customers have found resolutions.

Jordan Feigenbaum, a 50-year-old New York dad, was devastated when he checked his email three days before the match to find an email from StubHub saying the tickets he'd bought for his son's 11th birthday back in December were no longer available. The platform offered a refund and said they'd kick in extra if he agreed to get his money back in StubHub credits.

When he called to plead his case, he says a supervisor "reluctantly" explained that the problem was that similar tickets on the StubHub website were too expensive to send his way. He kept refreshing the app anyway, and he suddenly saw options to replace his tickets, which were promptly applied to his account. He's happy not to have to disappoint his soccer-fanatic middle schooler and eat the cost of the Philadelphia Airbnb the family reserved, but he's still uneasy about what happened.

"I do still feel really strongly that StubHub, and all of them, but StubHub in particular, don't do enough to protect ticket buyers, and that it ultimately erodes confidence in attending live events in general," he says. "I was lucky enough to have a happy ending, but I know that many more won't get that satisfaction."

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

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Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent on Business Insider’s Discourse team. She focuses on consumerism, culture, and the economy, among other topics. Some of her biggest stories have explored Red Lobster’s demise, middle-class shoplifting, convenience stores’ struggles, the rise of illicit drugs as work performance-enhancers, and generational finance trends, including Gen Z’s love for AmEx and the impending avalanche of baby boomers’ stuff. She also writes regularly about sports betting, the alcohol industry, work, millennials, and economic trends. Emily appears regularly on nationally syndicated radio shows and podcasts, including Marketplace, The Weekend Dive, and Today, Explained. She has guest hosted C-SPAN’s “After Words” and moderated multiple panels on economic policy and workplace dynamics.Before joining Business Insider, Emily was at Vox, where she covered business and the economy and wrote a newsletter, “The Big Squeeze,” about how people experience the forces of the economy and capitalism day to day. Prior to that, she worked at TheStreet.