Scalped

FIFA took measures to limit ticket re-selling, sometimes less charitably known as "scalping." In order to claim your tickets in South Africa, you needed to present the credit card that they were purchased with. Obviously, if you bought tickets online from somebody in the States and they weren't in South Africa to claim them for you, you're SOL.

Furthermore, the name of the purchaser is printed on the tickets. Theoretically this should prevent re-selling, as they will check your ticket against your passport at the gate. Presumably a major reason for this is to keep tickets out of the hands of known hooligans, or to provide a method for tracking down people who cause trouble in the stadium. I ran afoul of this system when I was in Italy trying to pick up Fiorentina tickets. It was the first game of the season and the process was agonizingly slow, leading to huge lines at the ticket centers and causing me to miss 30 minutes of the match. In fairness, they at least checked my passport at the gate, thus fulfilling the purpose of the system.

At no point in South Africa has anybody verified the name on my ticket, and plenty of my friends had picked up tickets outside the stadium and gotten in, indicating that FIFA has somehow managed to be less efficient than the corruption-riddled Italian FA. This emboldened me to buy tickets for the Brazil vs. Chile game off the internet, as it was in Johannesburg and I had declined to go to Durban for the Netherlands vs. Slovakia game.

One thing I noticed is that some people are wildly optimistic when it comes to selling their tickets. A friend of a friend was selling Category 2 tickets but wanted $600 for them - four times the face value. Let me reiterate that this price was quoted to me just hours before the game. Where did he think he'd find that kind of sucker in that kind of time? With that avenue having failed, I turned to Craigslist. Again, the disconnect from reality was staggering. I mean, four hours before the game, people were asking for $100 above face value. Surely if you haven't found a buyer at that point it's time to give up on dreams of turning a profit and just hope you can make your money back.

Indeed, I was able to find a much more reasonable gentleman who was selling good seats for their face value and was able to meet us at the stadium. Of course, you're always a bit nervous that these will turn out to be fake, but my friend and I were able to get in and take our seats and watch a game that was in no way worth the face value of the tickets. More on that later.