Seventy Years of Political Action 1953 - 2023
Demands are growing for a political reckoning over ticket scams at the World Cup — and beyond.
The National Independent Venue Association and Fan Alliance, organizations representing and advocating for entertainment venues and artists respectively, sent a joint letter to Congress on Thursday, calling on lawmakers to ban speculative and ghost tickets, cases where resellers flog tickets they don’t actually have.
The letter — addressed to Speaker Mike Johnson, Senate Majority Leader John Thune, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer — includes nearly two dozen accounts of fans who say they were scammed out of thousands of dollars trying to get tickets to the World Cup, which began last week. The groups are also asking fans to share their own stories with elected officials via the Fix the Tix Fan Action Center that launched last week.
“Every one of these stories erodes the public’s faith that consumers should and will be protected from fraud,” NIVA Executive Director Stephen Parker and Fan Alliance founder Donald Cohen wrote. “We urge Congress to work with us to prevent fraud like this in the future and finally enact ticket resale consumer protections that will protect Americans and ensure affordability.”
The letter flagged fans like Dacy Gillespie, who bought World Cup tickets for her sons on Christmas, only to learn on match day — months later — that the seller couldn’t deliver them. And Skylie Shore, who Parker and Cohen said spent well over $6,000 on tickets to the Scotland-Haiti match on June 13, but was forced to wait outside the stadium because she couldn’t access them as fans marched in on gameday.
“These examples reveal a consistent pattern: consumer deception, speculative ticket sales, and broken-hearted American families at the hands of resale ticketing companies like StubHub,” Parker and Cohen wrote.
In a statement, StubHub spokesperson Jack Sterne said that the platform does not allow speculative ticket sales, and blamed FIFA for users’ difficulty in accessing their tickets.
"We understand that attending the World Cup represents a significant investment in time and money, and we take our responsibility to every fan who books through our platform seriously,” Sterne said in a statement. “Many of the issues fans are facing trace back to the event organizer’s technology infrastructure, newly announced transfer restrictions, and a new app that was launched just a month ago.”
In response, FIFA said in a statement that the organization “can guarantee the validity and delivery of tickets purchased through its official platforms” and that FIFA.com/tickets “is the official ticket sales channel” for the tournament.
NIVA and Fan Alliance are urging congressional leadership to place universal price-gouging limits on ticket resale, enact stringent fines on perpetrators and a violation-reporting mechanism for ticket scams, and require secondary ticketing platforms to produce data on ticket fulfillment and consumer complaints.
The groups are not the only ones monitoring for evidence of shady ticket practices. Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway issued a consumer guidance in advance of the tournament, urging match-goers to beware of fraud and promising to hold offenders accountable. And the FBI in May put out a public service announcement, warning fans against purchasing tickets on copycat websites modeled on FIFA’s.
“With the World Cup coming to Kansas City, excitement is high and, unfortunately, so is the potential for fraud,” Hanaway said in her statement. “Missourians should be able to enjoy this once-in-a-generation event without fear of being deceived. My office will hold accountable anyone who seeks to exploit our families, and we stand ready to assist anyone who encounters suspicious activity.”
While Curaçao’s players were training for their match against in Ecuador, government officials from the World Cup’s smallest-ever competitor hosted a two-day conference in Kansas City to promote it as a destination for American investment.
The Caribbean island of around 158,000 people located just north of Venezuela is a semi-autonomous part of the Kingdom of the Netherlands. It is not quite a country, but since the sporting world is treating it like one this month, the government is hoping foreign investors will give it a fresh look.
“Curaçao is now on an international stage, while we never thought we would be there ... we want more people to know about Curaçao and invest,” Roderick Middelhof, Curaçao’s minister of economic development, told POLITICO.
After the team qualified for a World Cup spot last November, Curaçao's government quickly began discussing how the tournament could showcase the island's economic potential.
“When we knew that we would be going to the World Cup, the government sat together and said, 'OK, we need to take advantage of this moment,'” Middelhof said. “It was actually together with other ministers that we thought, 'OK, let’s organize meetings and show people what Curaçao is now, and what Curaçao will be in a few years with expansion and investment.'”
The Kansas City conference is one of several in World Cup cities organized by the economic-development ministry in parnership with CINEX, an agency that seeks to promote investment opportunities in Curaçao.
The events target companies interested in sectors ranging from energy and logistics to hospitality.
“[We invite] all companies that are interested in our oil sector and also other companies that are interested in international investment, so hotel owners, energy companies. For example, we had TOTAL; Epson was also there at one of the meetings,” Middelhof said.
“At the events we do a presentation about what Curaçao is and what Curaçao has to offer ... to put Curaçao in the spotlight ... around the World Cup,” he added.
Diversifying the economy beyond tourism is a key objective for the government, according to Middelhof. While tourism remains one of the island's main economic pillars, he sees significant potential in Curaçao's deep-water harbor, which could serve as a storage and logistics hub for international cargo, including oil.
“Our port is now really expanding, so the port of Curaçao is ready to provide storage space for other countries; it's not just about tourism,” he said, adding: “Curaçao now has the chance to not only rely on tourism, we can strive for more ... and show Curaçao is open for various businesses.”
Middelhof does acknowledge that the World Cup presents an opportunity to boost and further “stabilize” his country’s tourism sector, particularly as authorities pursue a target of 1 million stay-over visitors annually. Most tourists currently come from the Netherlands, reflecting the countries' historical ties. However, Curaçao is increasingly looking to broaden its visitor base.
The island is already seeing increased international interest following its World Cup qualification, said Middelhof, pointing to a rise in Google searches and social media engagement.
“Curaçao is, for a little while, on everyone's mind,” he said.
ROME — Donald Trump isn't the only problem on Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni's mind.
Failure to qualify for the FIFA men’s World Cup for the third consecutive time triggered a major political and public outcry in the football-obsessed country that has now morphed into a bitter fight over who controls the sport.
Meloni’s Brothers of Italy party leaped to propose curtailing the power of the country’s football association — the Federazione Italiana Giuoco Calcio (FIGC) — after its president, the 72-year-old Gabriele Gravina, resigned in April under heavy pressure following a World Cup playoff defeat to Bosnia-Herzegovina.
With new elections to run the FIGC slated for June 22, Meloni’s allies are pushing to call off the vote and place the body under special administration — an emergency procedure used in the past for the sport to overcome major corruption scandals.
In a country where football carries outsized cultural weight, Italy’s World Cup embarrassment has become a proxy battle over governance, reforms, investment and the Meloni administration’s willingness to extend political influence into independent institutions.
“The first concern should not be new elections; it is not through elections that you create the conditions for a rebound,” Italian Sports Minister Andrea Abodi said in an interview with POLITICO.
Football officials have denounced the government intervention as a power play to block the heavy favorite, Giovanni Malagò, a former president of the Italian Olympic Committee (CONI) who is disliked by Meloni’s party.
“The idea of placing it [the FIGC] under administration, to me, only suggests an occupation [by the government]; it offers no kind of perspective for the future,” Gravina told POLITICO from his Rome office, adorned by two twinkling World Cup trophies and other relics from a bygone era of glory. “The idea of taking over the football world has been circulating for far too long now,” he added.
Opposition parties have accused Meloni of centralizing control, stifling dissent and putting acolytes in positions of power, a pattern they observe in Italy’s state-owned television network, financial markets supervisor and judicial system.
But the government rejects that it wants to extend its reach to the FIGC. “It is a pathetic and baseless claim. There is no element that could be seen as an attempt by politics to take over this domain,” Abodi said.
POLITICO has been crunching the numbers to see how all 48 of this year’s World Cup participants rank in several other off-field categories, which we’ll share more of over the weekend.
In today’s item, we're looking at countries sorted by their FIFA rank against their citizens' assessment of how close they are to living their best possible life.
Turns out, the happiest game of the World Cup will be Sweden vs. the Netherlands today (that’s also the only group-stage game taking place between two EU members) — while the upcoming game between Haiti and Morocco on June 25 may well be interrupted by floods of tears and bouts of introspection.
The United States is failing in its responsibility as a World Cup host country, Iranian officials argued in a government statement shared exclusively with POLITICO that declared Mexico the tournament's off-field winner.
“The 2026 FIFA World Cup is played not only in stadiums but also in the streets, airports and public squares,” said Mohammad Reza Gilani, cultural affairs adviser at the Embassy of Iran in Mexico. “And in this parallel competition, Mexico seems to have taken the lead.”
Gilani praised what he described as Mexico’s welcoming atmosphere for visiting fans, contrasting it with immigration-related difficulties in the U.S., including visa complications and entry concerns affecting some delegations including his own.
His comments come at a precarious moment for relations between the U.S. and Iran, which barely a week ago were the only host nation and competitor, respectively, to enter the World Cup while at war. Since Iran’s opening match, President Donald Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian have signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at ending the U.S.-Israeli war against Tehran.
Off the field, tensions remain. Iran had to relocate its training camp from Tucson to Tijuana, and the soccer federation said Thursday it plans to lodge a complaint with FIFA after a request to travel to Los Angeles two days before Sunday’s match against Belgium was denied. Several members of the Iranian delegation have also denied visas from the State Department.
The Trump administration has defended its handling of the delegation’s travel arrangements. White House World Cup Task Force Executive Director Andrew Giuliani told POLITICO that 31 Iranian players and their coaches were approved for visas and said allowing the team to enter the U.S. one day before the match represented “a good will gesture” by U.S. authorities.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Iran has found Mexico a far more welcoming host, and has sought to expand its presence beyond soccer by operating a booth at a global expo in Mexico City. For Iranian officials, the contrast between the tournament’s co-hosts has become part of the story.
“Infrastructure matters. Stadiums matter. Security also matters,” said Gilani, a cultural affairs adviser at Iran's embassy. “But history shows that great hosts are remembered for something deeper: Being able to make the world feel welcome.”
“The 2026 World Cup is just getting underway,” he added, “but one thing already seems clear. Beyond the results on the pitch, Mexico is winning one of the tournament’s most important matches: the match of hospitality.”
OTTAWA — Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney’s rousing Davos speech, where he called on middle powers to not become losers to the world’s “hegemons,” delivered a message that positioned Canada as an influential convening power.
Now, with billions watching — including during this afternoon's match between Germany and Côte d'Ivoire in Toronto — the World Cup is giving Canada an unprecedented opportunity to thirst-trap a global audience to take America’s neighbor a little more seriously.
“The international brand of Canada is important for our economy, for our place in the world, diplomatically, but also commercially,” Canada’s Secretary of State for Sport and Olympic gold medalist Adam van Koeverden told POLITICO.
“We just want to emphasize that Canada is open for business,” he said. “We’re taking advantage of the reality that all eyes will be on Canada for the next couple of weeks throughout the FIFA tournament … and we want to continue to reinforce relationships, make new friends [and] meet new corporate partners.”
Canada needs foreign investors to get the Carney government’s dreams of building oil pipelines, new rail and port expansions to unlock new wealth for a country that continues to be the target of tariffs and casual annexation threats from its closest ally. And a bellicose U.S. President Donald Trump has only helped Carney in his trips around the world to lure more foreign investment, selling Canada as a reliable destination to an unreliable United States.
A goal for senior Canadian government officials is to use the World Cup to bait deep-pocketed viewers to attend the inaugural Canada Investment Summit that Carney is organizing in September. The idea is to attract “the world’s largest investors” to raise C$1 trillion over the next five years to charge the economy — Carney’s message of adapting to the global “rupture” by wresting economic control of the future put into practice.
That could mean more cash to expand sport infrastructure, such as stadiums, to host more global sporting events. The Toronto Stadium is notably the World Cup’s smallest among the 16 host cities with a 43,000-seat capacity. But organizers don’t want people to fixate on that.
Sharon Bollenbach, executive director of the FIFA World Cup 2026 Toronto Secretariat, told Forecast the city is leaning in hard on its “world in a city” theme — a nod to a city widely recognized as the most multicultural in the world.
“We speak 250 languages in our city,” she said. “Our cultural diversity is very extensive and vibrant … in all of our neighborhoods, in food, in the culture.” Asked what’s different about Toronto compared to Los Angeles, another city that could claim the same characteristics, Bollenbach suggested it’s the general optimism in the air that sets the Canadian city apart. “I think we just live that every day in such a positive and energetic way that that’s something we really want to showcase,” she said.
There’s hope the waterfront images of Toronto’s CN Tower and Vancouver’s North Shore mountains in the backdrop of World Cup stadium shots will generate an eventual tourism boom that hasn’t yet happened for the tournament itself.
Sara Anghel, president and CEO of the Greater Toronto Hotel Association, said one factor in lower-than-expected demand is that half the game tickets sold in Toronto are “local-ish” from the city area and province. The trend isn’t unique to Toronto after FIFA canceled blocks of thousands of hotel rooms in host cities this spring in response to fizzled out expectations.
“June is already a really, really busy month for Toronto, and so when we’re bringing this World Cup that’s never happened in our city ever, we’ve displaced all of the meetings and conferences that would usually come into the city,” Anghel said.
“They’re staying away because of the FIFA games.”
Climate activists are planning protests Sunday against FIFA’s sponsorship deal with Saudi state-owned oil and gas giant Aramco at World Cup sites and fan zones across the country.
Organizer Zan Dubin told POLITICO the protests are aimed at pressuring FIFA to drop Aramco while calling attention to the way oil company advertising becomes part of fans’ World Cup memories, a practice she called “sportswashing,” even as greenhouse gas emissions from oil use drive global temperatures higher.
The main action is set to take place outside Los Angeles’ SoFi Stadium ahead of the Belgium-Iran match there. The protest represents an extension of a crosstown campaign known as Dodger Fans Against Fossil Fuels, a Los Angeles-based campaign that has gathered nearly 30,000 signatures urging Dodgers owner Mark Walter to drop oil company Phillips 66.
FIFA announced Aramco as a major worldwide partner in 2024, giving the company sponsorship rights across several tournaments, including the 2026 Men’s World Cup and the 2027 Women’s World Cup. The deal drew pushback from climate and human rights groups, and more than 100 professional women's soccer players later urged FIFA to drop it. Aramco’s logo appears prominently in stadiums and on global match broadcasts.
The Los Angeles protest is being organized by a local chapter of the Sierra Club and Third Act SoCal and is expected to include Extinction Rebellion Lamenters, street-theater demonstrators dressed in sackcloth. Dubin said she was also in touch with protesters planning to show up at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami before a match there, as well as at fan sites in New Jersey, Seattle and Dallas.
U.S. fans are making travel plans to the Bay Area after their team clinched first place in Group D following a victory over Australia and Turkey's defeat to Paraguay.
Ready to welcome them will be San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie, who has personally attended five World Cups. He is also an investor in 49ers Enterprises, which purchased the venerable Leeds United soccer team in 2023.
We spoke with Lurie yesterday via FaceTime from a city command center, where he drew a parallel to his English club’s own turnaround this season: Newly promoted and expected to go straight back down, Leeds instead finished safely mid-table. Lurie is trying to engineer a similar revival in San Francisco, using major events like the World Cup and February’s Super Bowl to project competence and attract visitors and families.
Matches including the July 1 encounter between the U.S. and an as-yet undetermined opponent are played at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, 40 miles from downtown San Francisco and much closer to San Jose. Lurie is nevetheless eager to claim the so-called "San Francisco Bay Area" venue as his city's own.
“It’ll be incredible,” Lurie, a moderate Democrat who presents himself as a technocrat, told POLITICO. “It’ll be a thrilling moment for San Francisco, and for our region.”
Read our full interview with Lurie here.
Australia, Japan and Germany: all countries whose national football teams wear colors that do not appear on their national flags. Australia’s team plays in green and gold, a nod to the country’s natural landscape and the golden wattle, Australia’s national floral emblem.
Germany’s traditional white kit traces its origins to Prussia, whose flag featured black and white. Japan, meanwhile, wears blue for perhaps the most intriguing reason of all: superstition. According to a popular story, the color became associated with good fortune after a string of sporting successes in the 1930s (although the claim has never been conclusively proven).
But, it's hard to think of a group of football supporters more recognizable than the Dutch. Known as the Oranje Legioen (Orange Legion), Dutch sports fans have an unparalleled ability to turn every bar, stadium and city square into a sea of orange.
This year's World Cup is no exception. Thousands of Dutch fans have traveled across the Atlantic to support their national team in person, undoubtedly with suitcases full of orange clothing. Today, they’re in Houston.
The Dutch flag, however, consists of three horizontal stripes: red, white and blue. So what's with the orange?
The answer dates back centuries and is also the reason why several places in the United States, one of the hosts of this year's World Cup, have "Orange" in their names.
Orange is the national color of the Netherlands because of its ties to the Dutch royal family. It all began with William of Orange, also known as William the Silent, who became the symbol of Dutch independence during the Eighty Years' War against Spanish rule. The conflict began in 1568 and ended, you guessed it, 80 years later in 1648.
As William of Orange became synonymous with Dutch independence, the color in his title became associated with the Dutch nation itself. More than four centuries later, it remains a powerful national symbol.
But what does this have to do with the U.S.? Long before the current-day takeover of the Oranje Legioen, of American cities hosting world cup matches, the House of Orange, the royal dynasty founded by William of Orange, had already left its mark on North America.
During the Dutch Golden Age in the 17th century, the Dutch Republic established the colony of New Netherland, which stretched across parts of present-day New York, New Jersey and Delaware.
Even after the English seized the colony in 1664 and New Amsterdam became New York City, traces of the House of Orange survived in place names such as Orange County, New York. The county was specifically named after William III, Prince of Orange, a descendant of William the Silent who later became King William III of England.
So in a sense, it is a full-circle moment: Dutch football fans dressed in orange have returned to a part of the world where the House of Orange left a lasting legacy centuries ago.
The Netherlands has had a week in Texas, between matches in Dallas and Houston, and one of the leading members of its government delegation has been using the time to conduct old-school diplomacy.
In Houston, Mirjam Sterk — who has an expansive portfolio of a minister for long-term care, youth and sport — has visited dementia researchers at Texas Medical Center, among other stops, spoke to the CEO of an LGBTQ+ community center and played wheelchair basketball at a community center for kids with disabilities.
Sterk, who hails from the center-right Christian Democratic Appeal in the Dutch coalition, said she's counting on the famous fan walk that Dutch fans are expected to conduct en route to their match today against Sweden to build bridges in an unstable world. Speaking to POLITICO by phone, Sterk said she’s found plenty of like-minded people at Houston’s fan festival, among other destinations.
“It's a great example of how sports in this world, which is, of course, polarized with all this tension … between countries, can unite,” Sterk said. “It's also a sort of language we speak with each other that helps, I think, also in dealing with all these other challenges.”
