Hundreds of World Cup fans learned a hard lesson about modern capitalism this week: your ticket is only real until it isn’t. StubHub, the resale platform that has convinced us all that paying 3x face value for a seat is simply the cost of living, cancelled orders at the last minute. Poof. Dreams deferred. Flights still booked.
Here is the beautiful absurdity: fans paid for tickets through a middleman who profits by existing between you and the actual ticket holder. StubHub takes a cut. The original seller takes a cut. You pay the full freight. Then, when something goes wrong—seller fraud, double-sales, whatever—you discover that your “confirmed” purchase was actually a suggestion.
The platform issued refunds. Refunds! As if money replaces the experience of watching your team play for the first time in a decade, or the non-refundable hotel you already booked, or the fact that you told everyone at work you would not be in that week.
This is not a glitch. This is the feature. Resale platforms exist because primary ticket distribution is broken—controlled by venues and official channels that hoard inventory and charge what the market will bear. So we built a secondary market. Then we built a secondary market’s secondary market. At each layer, someone profits. At each layer, your actual ownership of the thing you bought gets hazier.
The real magic trick is convincing millions of people that paying a premium to a stranger through an app is preferable to the alternative. Turns out the alternative was always just “no ticket at all.” At least that one is honest.