By In September 2025, two months before the election, Democratic candidate for New York City’s mayoral Election, Zohran Mamdani, pledged to take on FIFA, the world’s largest soccer federation, with a bold proposal. Celebrating “Game Over Greed,” the campaign sought to end dynamic pricing, the practice of adjusting prices in real time based on market demand and scarcity. Zohran’s petition would made three demands: “No dynamic pricing, Reinstatement of the cap on ticket resales; 15 percent of tickets set aside for residents at a discount.” Much of the discontent among fans came from the fact that FIFA’s ticket pricing would allow seats initially sold for affordable prices to be marked up by thousands. Critics argued that these market practices were another form of price gouging by FIFA, exploiting historically high demand.
Now, with the tournament finished, the debate has intensified among fans and officials. The attorney general of both New York and New Jersey issued subpoenas to FIFA, investigating ticketing practices and citing a 34-percent price hike across all ticket categories. Reports showed that prices for seats at the World Cup Final in MetLife Stadium in the New York/New Jersey area reached new heights. Questions of how to allocate that game’s 80,663 seats among five billion soccer fans invited scrutiny of FIFA’s pricing practices and the broader use of dynamic pricing.
So what is dynamic pricing exactly, and how does it work? Unlike traditional ticketing, where prices are predetermined at a fixed rate regardless of conditions, dynamic pricing uses algorithms to adjust prices based on supply, demand, remaining inventory, and purchase timing. Companies adjust rates based on demand while also allocating scarce tickets to the consumers who value them most (as measured by willingness to pay). For example, if thousands of fans want to buy tickets to a playoff game, teams raise prices in response to stronger demand. It also helps consumers, though, by allowing them to get true market prices for tickets, especially in conditions that might drive down demand, such as a game on a hot Tuesday afternoon or a team performing poorly late in the season. Dynamic pricing allows prices to move (up or down and often both) toward a market-clearing price, as supply and demand change.
Sports teams have employed demand-based and variable pricing models for decades. Teams set their ticket prices in response to team quality, fan interest, market size, and even business concentration. The Yankees, Cowboys, Knicks, Dodgers, and others have capitalized on that flexibility, setting prices based on team success, national branding, and broader economic activity. Sports ticket pricing has long been tied to tiered systems, with dynamic pricing adjusting those tiers in real time based on various indicators.
This is consistent with firms’ expected behavior. In a 2012 study, researchers Shapiro and Drayer examined ticket pricing behavior across MLB teams, accounting for both primary and secondary markets. Their results supported the hypothesis that baseball teams maximized ticket prices, like any other competing firm. MLB teams were responsive to ongoing shifts in demand, adjusting prices based on the strength of the matchup, day of the week, current team success, and seasonal milestones. In other words, teams will use dynamic pricing to gain up-to-date data about demand, maximizing the profitability of each transaction. Both teams and fans discover the market-clearing price. Fans evaluate the opportunity costs and may choose lower-demand games that better fit their budgets.
Critics argue that the World Cup is different, as fans may travel around the world to find themselves priced out at the gate. With a limited number of games and incredibly high demand, few affordable options are available for fans to attend games without spending a fortune. Accusations of “price gouging” view the system itself is flawed, with prices continuing to rise given as evidence that FIFA exploiting its market power at consumers’ expense.
We watched this scenario play out in real time as fans scrambled to purchase tickets to the World Cup final in New York/New Jersey. As defending champion Argentina prepared to take on Spain, Forbes reported an average ticket price of over $11,000 (the highest ever recorded for a sporting event). Few fans could afford to purchase tickets, prompting online backlash against FIFA and dynamic pricing.
No failure of the market is necessary here. Prices are logical consequence of an extraordinarily high demand from fans chasing a fixed supply of seats. Allegations of “price gouging” by corporations, and attempts to fix them with policy, will do little to shift either factor.
(Some attorneys general are investigating allegations involving deceptive practices or broken promises in the ticketing process. Policymakers should distinguish between high prices caused by scarcity and deceptive or fraudulent practices, which are legitimate cause for official inquiry.)
More to the point, Mamdani’s proposal to FIFA to end dynamic pricing for the World Cup would not have “ended dynamic pricing,” but would likely make the problem worse. In fact, banning dynamic pricing would push more ticket sales off official sites and into secondary markets, where scalpers can capture the premium created by scarcity
Imagine FIFA sells tickets to a game at $100 apiece. The game may sell out immediately, with resellers and automated bots acquiring many of the available tickets. In turn, scalpers can charge prices close to or above the market-demand price that fans would have been willing to pay on FIFA’s own site, raking in a large profit margin on each transaction. The swap reduces FIFA’s potential revenue (by $500, if a $100 ticket were resold for $600), gained by the scalper rather than the federation itself. The buyer is no better off.
This may not seem like such a big deal for a global federation or national sports league; however, its effects will be greater on smaller franchises with tighter margins. Local clubs, newer leagues, and smaller venues rely on revenue from high-demand games to subsidize their high fixed operating costs. Stripping them of the opportunity to set prices based on demand may be destructive to many smaller operations.
Perhaps the great irony of Mamdani’s proposal is that even the most well-intended price caps couldn’t reduce what fans ultimately pay. Demand remains unchanged, so some fans still pay the market rate for tickets regardless of the supplier, while others will be priced out, or encounter sellouts or lotteries. What price-fixing policy does is transfer FIFA’s “excess revenue” to a middleman reseller. By widening the gap between face value and resale value (resale premium), the attempted “fix” attracts professional scalpers and bot networks to purchase scarce inventory before regular consumers can access it, forcing them to buy on a less-transparent gray market.
While slogans such as “Game Over Greed” may resonate intuitively, policymakers should carefully consider the unintended economic consequences of restricting dynamic pricing. With states already reviewing bills to ban dynamic pricing across a variety of entertainment industries, alongside outdated or inconsistently enforced anti-scalping laws, these proposals are gaining more traction in mainstream policy debate.
Dynamic pricing does not create scarcity. It exposes it. Banning market prices won’t create more seats in the stadium — it will only change who profits. If policymakers want to help fans, they should allow prices to reflect real market conditions.