For many football fans, attending the World Cup is a once-in-a-lifetime experience. But for some families, months of planning, expensive flights and hotel bookings ended outside the stadium after tickets they had already paid for were cancelled at the last minute.
Sergio Enrique Alvarado Montalvo thought he had planned the perfect Father’s Day gift.
He spent $1,700 on World Cup tickets through StubHub so his father could watch Lionel Messi play for Argentina.
His parents flew from Mexico to Dallas.
The family spent nearly $6,000 on flights, hotels and other travel expenses.
Then everything fell apart.
Just one day before the Argentina vs Austria match, StubHub informed Montalvo that the seller could no longer provide the tickets.
By then, the family had already travelled.
Despite repeated calls to the company, including one less than an hour before kick-off, no replacement tickets arrived.
“I was so sad and so frustrated, and so filled with rage, anger,” Montalvo said.
“It was a mix of feelings that is hard to explain.”
Instead of sitting inside the stadium watching one of football’s biggest stars, the family spent the evening at a nearby fan festival.
“It was a super sad weekend… but we enjoyed the time together,” he said.
His experience is far from unique.
As the 2026 FIFA World Cup continues across the United States, Canada and Mexico, growing numbers of supporters say they have been left without tickets despite paying thousands through secondary resale platforms.
Industry experts believe much of the problem stems from speculative ticketing, a practice where sellers advertise tickets they do not actually possess, hoping to obtain them later at a lower price.
If prices rise sharply before the match, some sellers cancel the transaction and sell elsewhere for more money.
The buyer receives a refund for the ticket but remains responsible for expensive travel costs.
Another father, Eben Pingree from Boston, said his family went through a similar ordeal.
His wife paid $2,800 on StubHub for tickets to Scotland’s match against Haiti as a surprise for their 11-year-old son, Cole.
The tickets never arrived.
“They basically had to just leave us there, and so my son was just devastated,” Pingree said.
The growing frustration has now reached the courts.
Two World Cup supporters have filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against StubHub, accusing the resale company of failing to deliver tickets that customers had already paid for.
The lawsuit claims fans spent large amounts of money only to suffer significant financial losses when tickets failed to materialise.
The complaint describes the situation as “a new low” for an industry that has long faced criticism over consumer protection.
StubHub has declined to comment on the legal case.
The dispute has also sparked a public blame game between StubHub and FIFA.
All official World Cup tickets are issued through FIFA’s own ticketing platform, meaning resale tickets must still be transferred using FIFA’s app or website.
StubHub argues FIFA’s newly launched system experienced technical problems that disrupted ticket transfers.
FIFA strongly rejects that claim.
The governing body says its platform has been operating reliably and insists tickets purchased outside its official channels are not guaranteed.
It also says more than five million fans have successfully attended matches during the tournament.
Ticket industry expert Scott Friedman believes the blame lies elsewhere.
“I blame StubHub 100%,” he said.
While acknowledging FIFA’s technology has its own shortcomings, Friedman argued the bigger issue remains the resale market itself.
Even some ticket sellers say they have been caught up in the confusion.
One seller from Austin told the BBC he lost $2,600 after StubHub cancelled a sale, withheld his payment and charged him a penalty despite claiming he had transferred the ticket correctly.
Lawyer Bradford Clements, who represents clients pursuing more than $2.4 million in claims against StubHub, said many ordinary consumers eventually abandon complaints because the dispute process is too difficult.
“People don’t understand that StubHub’s name of their game is to intimidate you, defer you, and deny you,” Clements alleged.
StubHub declined to respond to that accusation.
The company says every purchase is covered by its FanProtect Guarantee, promising either replacement tickets or a refund if tickets cannot be delivered.
But for supporters who have already paid thousands for flights, hotels and transport, that refund often covers only a small part of what they have lost.
As the tournament enters its decisive stages and demand for tickets continues to climb, consumer advocates fear more fans could find themselves standing outside stadium gates, holding little more than cancelled orders and memories of a trip that never turned out the way they imagined.
