NIVA-Fan Alliance World Cup Letter
June 18, 2026
The Honorable Mike Johnson
Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
H-232 The Capitol
Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable John Thune
Majority Leader, United States Senate
S-230 The Capitol
Washington, DC 20510
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The Honorable Hakeem Jeffries
Democratic Leader, United States House of Representatives
2257 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
The Honorable Charles E. Schumer
Democratic Leader, United States Senate
322 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, DC 20510
Dear Speaker Johnson, Leader Thune, Leader Jeffries, and Leader Schumer:
On behalf of the nation’s live entertainment sector, including the independent venues, festivals, presenters, and fans in communities across the country, we write to you about the ongoing fake ticket and affordability crisis taking place around 2026 FIFA World Cup and to urge you to ban the sale of fake, or “ghost”, tickets and enact ticket price gouging protections for all resale tickets sold in the U.S.
Outside the gates of World Cup games happening in 11 cities across the U.S., your constituents and visitors from across the globe have not been able to get into the games they have spent hundreds or thousands of dollars to attend, while Congress has yet to ban speculative or ghost “tickets.” A speculative, or ghost, “ticket” is the listing and/or sale of a license to enter a live event that is not actually in the possession by the reseller.
The attached exhibits document dozens of first-hand accounts of ghost ticketing just over the last week. These examples reveal a consistent pattern: consumer deception, speculative ticket sales, and broken-hearted American families at the hands of resale ticketing companies like StubHub.
Instead of showcasing America's ability to host the world's largest sporting event, less than a week into the 2026 World Cup, the international conversation has become one of cancelled tickets, fraudulent listings, fans turned away at the gates, and consumers left holding thousands of dollars in unrecoverable travel costs.
On June 13, 2026, Skylie Shore was left standing outside Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts after buying Scotland-Haiti FIFA World Cup tickets on Stubhub. She said, “We have spent hundreds of dollars on parking, on merch, on pregaming, on getting to the stadium, and it’s such a disappointment that we spent $6,114 and here we are watching everyone enter the stadium while we have been waiting for our tickets all day…. Stubhub, I have issues with you. We didn’t want the refunds. We wanted our tickets.”
On June 15, 2026, Ardas Sabunchyan, a North Texas father was forced to tell his son they would not be attending the FIFA World Cup match in Arlington after the tickets he purchased through Viagogo, a StubHub partner, could not be delivered. He said, “ ..You are given promises, when you are creating ties with your son, that you are going to spend a great time, and everybody's expecting that moment, and then you are saying, ‘Well son, there are no tickets available for this game.'"
On June 16, 2026, Dacy Gillespie, a mom from Missouri, told her story about buying Stubhub World Cup tickets for her “soccer-fan” sons for Christmas. “Today’s the day of the game, and, as I feared, Stubhub sent me an email saying, ‘the seller can’t deliver your original tickets,” Gillespie said. “I called Stubhub again and they refuse to do anything about it.”
This is not the legacy that should define the United States and the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
The nation’s independent venues and a coalition of artists, fans, and music and live event industry organizations have been urging Congress to ban speculative and ghost “tickets” completely since the Taylor Swift Eras Tour on-sale debacle in 2022. We warned that consumers would purchase tickets that did not exist. We warned that families would travel thousands of miles only to discover their tickets could not be delivered. We warned that refunds would not make consumers whole after airfare, hotels, rental cars, parking, and other travel expenses. Unfortunately, every one of those warnings has become a reality on the world’s biggest sporting stage.
While the World Cup is drawing national attention to speculative ticketing, this same consumer harm occurs every single day at independently owned venues, theaters, festivals, comedy clubs, and performing arts centers across America. Unlike FIFA, the NFL, or major professional leagues, these small businesses and non-profits are not billion-dollar organizations capable of absorbing the reputational damage created by speculative ticket sellers. Fans blame the venue, artists lose goodwill, and local businesses lose revenue despite having done nothing wrong.
While Congress has yet to establish a national prohibition on speculative ticketing, several states have acted decisively. Maryland, Maine, Minnesota, Oregon, Connecticut, Vermont, Nevada, and others have enacted laws that prohibit speculative ticket sales outright and do not allow resellers to evade these protections by relabeling speculative listings as "ticket procurement," "concierge," or other similarly described “services.” If a seller does not actually possess the ticket at the time of sale, consumers remain exposed to the same risk of fraud, non-delivery, financial loss, and deception.
A bill that Congress is considering right now, the TICKET Act, would still allow for the same ghost ticketing that is victimizing your constituents right now across the country during the World Cup.
For years, a number of organizations that present themselves as advocates for fans have lobbied Congress in support of the TICKET Act while representing, partnering with, or receiving funding from major secondary ticketing interests, including StubHub, to oppose meaningful reform that would protect consumers from scalping and speculative ticketing. Today, many of those same organizations, including the Sports Fans Coalition, the Coalition for Ticket Fairness, and the National Consumers League, among others, have been conspicuously silent as the very fans they claim to represent are crying out for help.
Four years ago in Qatar, the host country for the 2022 FIFA World Cup, the ticketing meltdown that the U.S. World Cup is now experiencing did not happen. That is because Qatar enacted a resale ticket price cap not permitting any 2022 World Cup ticket to be sold above face value.
Stringent fines and punishments there abated the sale of ghost “tickets” like we are seeing sold every day for the World Cup in the United States.
The only national ticketing regulation in the United States is the BOTS Act, which has only been enforced once since its enactment in 2016. The result? What we are seeing in the stories shared with this letter and ticket prices for the World Cup in the United States that are 143,000% higher than the 2022 matches in Qatar.
Today, on behalf of the fans that we serve, NIVA, Fan Alliance, and the live entertainment industry are asking Congress to:
Ban speculative, or ghost ticketing, without exception with the following language: “A reseller shall not sell or offer to sell speculative tickets, tickets not in the possession of the reseller.”
Place universal price gouging limitations on ticket resale to remove the financial incentive for deceptive ticketing practices like ghost ticketing.
Ensure stringent fines of not less than $10,000 per listing, per day and empower the Federal Trade Commission and state attorneys general to set up a violation reporting mechanism and meaningfully enforce these provisions.
Require secondary ticketing platforms to produce data on ticket fulfillment, replacement requests, refunds, consumer complaints, and professional reseller activity — information they have repeatedly declined to publicly disclose.
Every one of these stories erodes the public’s faith that consumers should and will be protected from fraud. We urge Congress to work with us to prevent fraud like this in the future and finally enact ticket resale consumer protections that will protect Americans and ensure affordability.
Sincerely,
Stephen Parker
Executive Director
National Independent Venue Association
Donald Cohen
Executive Director
Fan Alliance
ABOUT NIVA
The National Independent Venue Association (NIVA) is the national trade association representing thousands of independent live entertainment venues, festivals, promoters, and more. NIVA works to preserve and nurture the ecosystem of live entertainment. NIVA empowers members and their teams with member benefits, advocacy on the state, local, and federal levels, an annual industry-leading conference, and more.
NIVA led the Save Our Stages campaign, culminating in landmark legislation in 2020 that established the $16.25 billion Shuttered Venue Operators Grant program, the largest arts investment in U.S. history.
NIVA is committed to equity in its support of independent stages. It seeks to create and encourage opportunities for venues, promoters, and festivals owned, operated, and staffed by people of color, women, non-binary, LGBTQ+, veterans, and people with disabilities.
CONTACT
Lucky Break PR
Kris Ferraro, Kris@luckybreakpr.com
Mike Stommel, Mike@luckybreakpr.com
