Sergio Enrique Alvarado Montalvo had saved for months to surprise his father with World Cup tickets, envisioning an unforgettable Father’s Day watching Lionel Messi play. He paid $1,700 on StubHub for the Argentina v Austria match, flew his parents from Mexico to Dallas, and spent nearly $6,000 on travel and hotels.
Just one day before they were set to travel, StubHub abruptly notified him that the seller could not deliver the tickets, refusing to provide comparable replacements due to soaring prices. The family turned up at the stadium anyway, hoping they could still get their tickets, with Montalvo on the phone to StubHub up until an hour before kick-off.
“Fans left stranded after StubHub cancels World Cup tickets last minute, costing thousands in travel.”
“I was so sad and so frustrated, and so filled with rage, anger,” the 45-year-old told the BBC. “It was a mix of feelings that is hard to explain.”
Industry insiders are calling this one of the largest ticketing collapses in history. As the 2026 World Cup sweeps across 16 cities in the US, Canada and Mexico, many fans are finding their bucket lists ruined by last-minute cancellations on secondary marketplaces. The primary culprit is believed to be “speculative ticketing”, where unverified sellers list tickets they do not yet own, hoping to source them cheaper and closer to the event. When prices soar, sellers back out to resell for higher profit, leaving buyers empty-handed with refunds that don’t cover travel costs.
Eben Pingree, 44, from Boston, faced an identical scenario after his wife Caitlin paid $2,800 on StubHub for tickets to the Scotland v Haiti match to surprise their 11-year-old son Cole. They had co-ordinated an extensive trip with another father-son duo, only for the tickets to vanish on match day. “They basically had to just leave us there, and so my son was just devastated,” Pingree told the BBC.
Back in Dallas, Montalvo and his family spent their match evening at a local fan festival instead of watching from the stands. “It was a super sad weekend... inside, outside... [but] we enjoyed the time together,” he added.
Separately, two World Cup fans have filed a lawsuit against StubHub in a proposed class action on Tuesday, accusing the resale platform of failing to deliver tickets they had paid for. The suit, filed by Julie Reeker Moghal and Reuben Renteria, says they paid StubHub at least $1,900 each.