The Corner Newsletter: FIFA’s Rip-Off Pricing Policy (August 11th, 2026)
Welcome to The Corner. In this issue, we take a look at how FIFA manipulated World Cup ticket prices, and the lessons for Congress and enforcers.
FIFA’s Manipulation of World Cup Ticket Prices Underscores Need for a National Policy to Outlaw Price Discrimination.
Amal Khan
Spain may have just clinched the 2026 World Cup title, but there’s still no decision on whether the tournament’s chaotic pricing policies will force lawmakers and law enforcers to finally reckon with the harms created by allowing a monopolist to combine absolute control over a commodity with a license to sell an identical good to different people at different prices.
This year’s World Cup marked the first time FIFA implemented dynamic pricing at any of its tournaments, and the result was exorbitant pricing for most of the tickets sold, combined with thousands of empty seats at venues in US, Canada, and Mexico as other tickets went unsold. The effects on pricing were staggering. A ticket for the opening game in 2022 cost $600 to $725. The same ticket this year cost $2,355.
FIFA defended their use of dynamic pricing as following American entertainment industry standards. They claimed their system is based on the sales model the San Francisco Giants introduced to the market in 2009, allowing baseball ticket prices to be adjusted based on supply and demand. In response to complaints about ticket prices, FIFA argued their system was designed to both prevent scalpers from reselling the tickets for higher prices and siphoning revenue from FIFA. The strategy didn’t work: at one point four tickets for the July 19 final were listed for $2.3 million on FIFA’s resale website. While the tickets weren’t purchased at this price, the listing exemplified how FIFA has given resellers permission to exploit consumers.
In principle, dynamic pricing also aims to benefit consumers by cutting ticket prices when demand is low. But FIFA appears to have geared the system not to lower prices even if the result was empty seats. “If you sell it at a lower price point in this particular market it would have gone to secondary markets at much, much, much higher prices,” FIFA president Gianni Infantino said, noting ticketing revenue would flow to “black-market activities and not to football.”
In late June, reports surfaced that the U.S branch of FIFA had advised against dynamic pricing but was overruled by FIFA’s executive committee. FIFA denies these accusations.
Fans have also complained about deceptive ticketing practices: such as receiving inferior tickets after paying for premium seats. In response, attorneys general of New York, New Jersey, California, and Texas have called for an investigation of FIFA’s pricing tactics and potential violation of consumer protection laws. California Attorney General Rob Bonta is requesting information on “how seating categories were represented, whether seat assignments differed from those representations, what disclosures were provided to buyers, and how any issues were addressed through refunds or other remedies.”
Traditionally, goods and services were sold at set prices, based on the cost of a product plus a margin of profit. This began to change after the Airline Deregulation Act of 1978 removed government control over ticket prices, and airlines began to experiment with new pricing policies based on demand for particular flights. Beginning about 20 years ago, online platform corporations like Google began to move past simple dynamic pricing to personalized pricing, also known as “first-degree price discrimination” or “surveillance pricing.” Under this practice, corporations use highly personal information about a specific individual to present different people with different prices for identical products.
Over the last year, a growing number of states have taken action to reign in such pricing policies, especially in groceries. On July 23, for instance, New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherrill signed the Fair Price Protection Act into law, barring retailers from discriminatory surveillance pricing, making New Jersey the third state to do so after Connecticut and Maryland.
Unfortunately, there is still no broader national policy against such extortionary practices. Although many hoped the Department of Justice’s recent – and ultimately victorious – antitrust lawsuit against Live Nation-Ticketmaster would provide a framework to reign in such policies, the case did not touch on dynamic or surveillance pricing. As algorithmic pricing becomes more entrenched into our daily lives, from once-in-a-lifetime events like watching the World Cup to daily activities like buying groceries, the need for transparent pricing techniques becomes more imperative.
Open Markets Helps Revive Algorithmic Pricing Suit Against MGM and Caesars
Open Markets Institute helped revive a proposed antitrust class action lawsuit alleging major casino operators MGM and Caesars used algorithmic pricing to coordinate on room prices and overcharge guests in Atlantic City. Open Market last year submitted an amicus brief in Cornish-Adebiyi v. Caesars Entertainment on behalf of consumers who accused Atlantic City casino-hotels of price- fixing with the aid of a firm called Cendyn. Late last month, a federal appeals court ruled that the complaint was erroneously dismissed. The case will now proceed to discovery in the district court.
Open Markets Details How Container Shipping Industry is Dominated by Foreign Cartels
The Open Markets Institute last week released a new Industry Spotlight, “Creating a Publicly Accountable Ocean Supply Chain,” on container shipping that shows how decades of deregulation and consolidation have left the United States dependent on a ‘container cartel’ of six foreign-owned shipping firms that control more than 90 percent of U.S. trade on major routes. By contrast, the U.S.-flagged container fleet has fallen to just 58 vessels —less than one percent of the global total. “Container shipping is critical infrastructure,” said Arnav Rao, transportation policy analyst at the Open Markets Institute and author of the report. “Yet today, the United States relies on a container cartel not only to stock store shelves and support businesses, but increasingly to provide military sealift capacity during national emergencies. That should ring alarm bells for anyone who cares about economic resilience, national security, or fair competition.” To address these challenges, Open Markets recommends stronger oversight of global shipping alliances; restoring nondiscrimination protections for shippers; expanding support for U.S.-flagged vessels and mariners, and; creating a public container shipping option to guarantee fair access to global markets. Read the full Industry Spotlight here.
📝 WHAT WE'VE BEEN UP TO:
Open Markets Institute filed an amicus brief urging the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit to prohibit Google from continuing to pay billions of dollars each year to preserve its monopoly over internet search, arguing that allowing the company to keep buying default placement would undermine one of the most significant antitrust victories against Big Tech in decades. The brief supports the district court’s landmark finding that Google illegally maintained its monopoly through exclusionary agreements with device manufacturers and browser developers, but found that the court’s proposed remedy falls short because Google would still be allowed to pay companies such as Apple and browser developers to make Google Search the default search engine. “An illegal monopoly isn’t fixed if the monopolist can simply keep writing the same checks that built it,” said Tara Pincock, policy counsel at the Open Markets Institute and the brief’s author. Read the brief here.
The Center for Media and Digital Governance at Open Markets condemned the Federal Communications Commission’s elimination of a rule, enshrined in federal statute, limiting media consolidation by prohibiting broadcast TV corporations from reaching more than 39% of U.S. households. “This decision effectively places FCC Chair Brendan Carr in open defiance of Congress,” CMDG director Courtney Radsch said. “If big TV media wants to compete more fairly with Big Tech, the answer is the break-up of such tech platforms, not to lift ownership limits that will reduce choice, pluralism, and diversity in the media that millions of Americans watch every day.”
Open Markets legal director Sandeep Vaheesan argues in University of Pennsylvania’s The Regulatory Review that state lawmakers should rebuild antitrust law around clear rules that curb corporate power and reduce opportunities for corruption, discretion, and backroom dealmaking. “Lawmakers should generally prohibit mergers involving firms with, for example, market shares of more than 20 percent or annual revenues greater than $10 billion and outlaw unfair practices such as exclusive dealing and predatory pricing for these firms,” Vaheesan wrote.
Open Markets fellow Matt Scherer and Maya Jenkins of Americans for Financial Reform warn in The Boston Globe that the AI boom is increasingly resembling a debt-fueled speculative bubble with risks that could spread far beyond the tech sector and call on policymakers to take action before it bursts. “It is up to the Trump administration and the Federal Reserve to wake up and safeguard the real economy from excessive risk,” the authors wrote. “If they fail to take action, Congress should step in and do so. And states should step in to protect their residents if the residents if the federal government won’t.”
Open Markets Europe director Max von Thun was quoted in The Guardian commenting on the EU’s $1 billion fine on Google under the Digital Markets Act for self-preferencing and preventing app developers from freely steering users to other offers outside of the company’s Play Store. “Having finally established Google’s non-compliance, the commission must now move quickly to force Google to end its anti-competitive practices once and for all. Europe’s startups and innovators cannot wait much longer,” he was quoted as saying.
OMI senior legal analyst Daniel Hanley guest lectured for a Stanford University class on the Politics of AI. He discussed the adverse effect of AI on human cognition, individual liberty, and democracy.
Open Markets Institute joined other antimonopoly, consumer, tech oversight groups in endorsing the “Online Sellers Bill of Rights,” a bill designed to protect independent businesses that sell through online marketplaces like Amazon. The bill calls would require advance notice of policy changes and limit how long companies can freeze inventory or withhold payments. OMI’s endorsement was covered in the Vermont Daily Chronicle.
🔊 ANTI-MONOPOLY RISING:
UK’s Competition and Markets Authority is investigating Microsoft for charging personal and family customers for the addition of its AI assistant Copilot to Microsoft 365 subscriptions, initially offered at no extra cost. (Reuters)
A House Judiciary subcommittee has summoned the world’s largest real estate brokerage, Compass, and Midwest Real Estate Data, or MRED, a listing service to answer questions over their use of private listing databases. (New York Times)
The EU AI Act has gone into effect, giving the European Commission the authority to evaluate AI models before public release in the region, restrict EU market access, and fine a provider up to €15 million, or 3% of its annual turnover, whichever is higher. (CNBC)
New Jersey sued Amazon under federal and state antitrust laws over its illegal use of its dominance over its package-delivery network to suppress wages and working conditions for delivery drivers while also preventing them from unionizing. The lawsuit argues that Amazon, through its Delivery Service Partner, or DSP, program wields monopsony power over the small businesses that actually carry out package deliveries on its behalf and dictates prices and terms to them. (Wall Street Journal)
📈 VITAL STAT:
10 Billion
The amount in punitive damages Google could face in private lawsuits from companies selling rival products after its first loss under the EU’s Digital Markets Act. The EU’s $1 billion on tech giant for self-preferencing is likely to embolden more parties to sue. (Reuters)
📚 WHAT WE'RE READING:
This Is the Plan: How to End America’s Meltdown and Save Democracy: In his book, political organizer and Wisconsin’s former Democratic Party chair Ben Wikler distills lessons from his politically divided state on how to defeat Trumpism at every level of the ballot and build a future of democracy and freedom.