World Cup stadiums may have been largely sold out this summer across North America, but that hasn’t deterred New Jersey attorney general Jennifer Davenport from continuing the state’s investigation into FIFA and its ticketing practices, which priced out and potentially “exploited” the average fan.
The investigation will continue in the wake of the tournament, which concludes with the World Cup final on Sunday at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J.
The investigation was first launched jointly by Davenport and New York attorney general Letitia James back in May, prior to the tournament’s kickoff. The offices of James and Davenport sent subpoenas to FIFA, requesting information about the ticketing for MetLife’s games in particular, of which there were eight total, including the final.
“My office, [the office of the New Jersey attorney general] and [the NYC department of consumer and worker protection] are investigating FIFA after reports of soaring World Cup ticket prices and fans not getting seats as advertised,” James posted to social media at the time.
“New Yorkers have been waiting years for the World Cup to happen here. They deserve a fair shot at affordable tickets.”
The attorney generals took issue not only with the exorbitant pricing—caused by FIFA’s new “dynamic pricing” model—but also stadium seat maps that were reportedly misleading to fans. FIFA reportedly changed the publicized mapping of seating zones after fans had already purchased tickets to be in a specific zone of a stadium, thus putting fans in “less desirable seats, including seats far from the field or behind the goals,”per the attorney generals’ original release.
The attorney generals planned to investigate if and how ticket holders were “misled about the locations of the seat they were purchasing” and if FIFA’s conduct “contributed to soaring prices.”
N.J. Attorney General Vows to Continue Work
“Our appetite is to make sure that we’re protecting consumers all the time,” Davenport told The Athletic this week. “The exploitation of fans and consumers is a huge piece of that. This started because of what we were seeing in reporting and when we have information like that, we want to make sure that we use our laws and our protections to make sure that we’re looking into it, especially as we’re grappling with an affordability crisis.”
“We are looking at a few issues,” she added. “The first is whether or not fans were misled about the seating location of the tickets they bought. For the initial ticket sales, FIFA seat maps divided the stadium into four zones, categories one through four. The category one seats were the most desirable. But after fans had already bought tickets, FIFA created new zones, which included a front row in a category, made up of the most desirable seats within the categories.
“We’re also looking into the ticket prices themselves, which were significantly higher this year than in previous World Cup tournaments. We know that FIFA issued or used variable pricing to adjust the prices based on demand. As they released tickets in phases, prices for some of those matches skyrocketed. What we’ve seen is that between October 2025 and April 2026, prices were raised by FIFA for more than 90 of the 104 World Cup matches.”
For World Cup final in particular, which sees Argentina and Spain battle, tickets are tens of thousands of dollars, making it the most expensive U.S. sporting event on record, surpassing even NFL Super Bowls and the NBA Finals. Sunday’s tickets are at least four to six times the average cost of a ticket to the 2022 World Cup final in Qatar.
Davenport does not yet know how FIFA would be punished if the state’s consumer protection laws were found to be violated.
