With the ICC T20 World Cup less than three months away, the price for the tickets have skyrocketed, especially for the mouth-watering India vs Pakistan contest. Although the World Cup is taking place in the United States of America (USA) – a non-traditional cricketing nation, the prices continue to remain at an all-time high.
According to a report in USA Today, tickets to two of India’s matches involving Pakistan and Canada had been sold out as soon as they were released. However, the same tickets were now being sold on secondary platforms (resale websites) at exorbitantly high prices.
The official tickets for the India-Pakistan match were priced at $6 (Rs 497) with the most expensive ticket for the premium seats costing around $400 (Rs 33,148) without taxes. The ICC had specified at the time that “no additional fees will be imposed beyond the specified taxes”.
However, on StubHub and SeatGeek, the same $400 ticket was now available for $40,000 (around Rs 33 Lakh) and if the platform fee was added, the amount zooted up to $50,000 (around Rs 41 Lakh).
On SeatGeek, the lowest-priced tickets started at $1,198 (Rs 99,305) and went up to $179,500 (Rs 1.48 crore). Adding the platform fees, the eventual price of the tickets came out to around $222,500 (Rs 1.8 crores).
Outrageous pricing
To understand how outrageous the ticket prices are, one could have got a World Series ticket at around $1,100 last year while courtside seats for the NBA finals were going for as much as $24,000. The average price for a ticket to Super Bowl LVIII which the Kansas City Chiefs won last month came around $9,000 on the secondary market.
India and Pakistan will resume their World Cup rivalry on June 9 in New York. While India has won seven matches out of eight in the T20 World Cups, Pakistan’s only win over their neighbours came during the 2021 edition when Babar Azam and Mohammad Rizwan steamrolled their opponents in Dubai by 10 wickets.
India quickly avenged the loss in the subsequent edition where Virat Kohli’s masterful innings took India to victory in front of a 90,000+ crowd at the Melbourne Cricket Stadium (MCG) in Australia.
(With inputs from agencies)
