Fifa Women’s World Cup 2023 tickets: Fans’ anger at website issues

Fans have had trouble booking tickets to the Women's World Cup on the Fifa website. Photo / Supplied

Fans around the world have vented their anger after errors and delays in purchasing tickets from the Fifa Women’s World Cup ticket site.

Single match passes came back on sale at 2pm today (NZT) as European fans woke in the middle of the night to secure the remaining tickets.

“Worst f**ing ticketing system in the world,” one fan said on Twitter.

Another called out the governing body: “It’s 3am in England and your ticket system isn’t working (it’s asking me to refresh constantly).”

When arriving on the site, fans are asked to submit a unique code. After doing so, a red banner pops-up saying “please refresh the page”. People are having to continue refreshing but can’t get through – as some eventually get through the initial step but were met with a large waiting queue.

Desperate fans have also tried to get through on several different devices – working for some but not for others.

“I’m so stressed,” says one.

“Try using Safari! I had the same issue on Google Chrome, now I’ve switched and it’s working,” another commented.

“Baffling that they’d choose 2pm for NZ/AU and 3am for the majority of countries represented in the World Cup. Why not go for 8pm so at least this disaster of a ticketing system is happening at 9am,” said one user.

A New Zealand-based Fifa spokesperson told the Herald that people need to “clear their cache in their browser”.

”You want to clear it from the last four weeks,” says the spokesperson.

That will get ticket purchasers through the first step, then they’ll join a queue. Fifa said the wait time in the queue could be longer due to the high demand.

It comes after Fifa hosted an event at Eden Park with hundreds of fans earlier on Tuesday, to celebrate the 100-days countdown until the event starts, and ticket sales coming back online.

I think that’s what happened - seemed to just finally open. Now I’m seemingly very far down the queue

— humlae (@emhumlae) April 11, 2023

Prior to any issues, fans were required to create a Fifa ticketing account before single tickets will become available to purchase on a first-come, first-served basis.

Fans were encouraged to get to the site early as “earlier purchases have a higher chance of success than purchases processed later in the sale phase”, Fifa said on its website.

At Eden Park on Tuesday, tournament head of marketing Kim Anderson said there’s been an “unprecedented demand for tickets”, so the advice was to buy early and not wait until the tournament has started to secure a spot at the world’s biggest women’s sporting event in July and August.

Tickets are on sale now! Be there to witness #BeyondGreatness 🎟️#FIFAWWC

— FIFA Women's World Cup (@FIFAWWC) April 11, 2023

Anderson has anticipated record-breaking crowds as women’s sport – particularly football – goes through a “cultural movement” and is “exploding all around the world.

“Australia and New Zealand are such a bucket list destination,” Anderson added. “We’ve seen so much excitement for people to come to this region from a whole bunch of different nationalities across the world.”