Grace Wisnewski at the 2022 at the FIFA U-20 Women’s World Cup in Costa Rica. Photo: Photosport
Football fans are frustrated at the process for reselling tickets to FIFA Women's World Cup matches. For some, even buying tickets to games through the official website is proving a struggle.
The tournament starts next week and the latest numbers from FIFA show less than half of available tickets for New Zealand matches have been sold.
Amy Harrison bought tickets to see the Matildas play as soon as they were released in 2022, but later realised she wanted a better view - and bought new ones.
She listed the old tickets for three adults and three children on FIFA'S official resale platform, she only managed to sell the adult ones.
"You can't buy children's ticket without an adult attached to it, so what we were seeing for days was just an abundance of children's tickets available to all games. They were just pointless and wasted because you couldn't buy them."
Harrison said eventually sellers began to change upgrade the tickets to adult, which they can do at their own cost, and then relist them on the resale site.
Only the seller can upgrade the child ticket to adult, and not every seller will pay to do it.
The result is many are unsold, and for some games the number of child tickets vastly outnumbers adult.
Harrison wants the ability for buyers to pay to change the ticket from a child to an adult.
FIFA told RNZ in a statement the ability - and cost - to upgrade tickets will stay with the seller.
Harrison isn't the only one who is unhappy.
Dunedin man, Duncan, struggled with the FIFA website when trying to get tickets to the Switzerland vs New Zealand match.
"I've gone on using my app on the phone, and also on the laptop, and it goes right through the process and then says 'payment unsuccessful'. I've checked with my bank and they're not blocking anything."
FIFA told RNZ Duncan could try changing the way his address is listed on his account, as this has created errors for others.
So, Duncan tried again - and managed to buy his tickets.
Football fans told RNZ they are frustrated that they need a smart phone App to show their tickets to get in the gate at matches.
They're also annoyed that anyone wanting to exchange tickets must keep at least one ticket for themselves.
FIFA says the requirement to keep one ticket is to protect against scalpers.
It advises fans without a phone to use a desktop to open an account and buy tickets that way.
But they won't be able to print them out - instead they'll need to contact FIFA to request a ticket as a printable PDF.
