Organisers have ruled out using dynamic ticket pricing for Euro 2028 which will be co-hosted by Ireland and the UK.
Chair of England’s Football Association Debbie Hewitt, who also chairs the tournament board, has insisted that making affordable tickets widely available is “fundamental” to ensuring a successful tournament.
Dynamic pricing – where prices rise and fall depending on demand – has long been adopted by hotel and airline companies, among others, but is much less common for sport and entertainment event tickets.
The issue came to the fore in 2024 when it became clear that a dynamic pricing model was being used for ticket sales for Oasis’ reunion tour, with prices rising sharply as people waited in the queue to purchase.
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FA chief executive Mark Bullingham ruled out such a system being used for Euro 2028.
“There won’t be any dynamic ticket pricing. I think that’s really well established,” he said at the tournament launch on Wednesday in London.
“I think there are a couple of basic principles (organisers will adopt) – one is not dynamic ticket pricing, and the other one is there will be approximately half of the tickets in Category Three and also the Fan First category, which is the category below that.”
At Euro 2024, which took place in Germany, Category Three tickets cost €60 while Fan First tickets were priced at €30.
Fifa has faced criticism for adopting what it calls a “variable” pricing structure for next summer’s World Cup.
The global governing body points argues such pricing is commonplace in North America, where the tournament is being held. Fifa has also pledged to ringfence some tickets for specific fan categories, which will have a fixed price.
Hewitt said it was “fundamental” that tickets be affordable for Euro 2028, adding: “Right in the front of our minds is, this has to be an affordable Euros to a significant number of people who are waiting.
“One of the things that I give Uefa credit for is that they’ve never pushed back from that. We would all make it clear that actually the revenues from this tournament are crucial because they get redistributed to football.
“So there’s no point in us saying, ‘it’s free, everybody come along’, because we’re not going to do the right thing then by the game, but it’s equally right that we give thought and we’re creative as to how we make sure that as many as possible can access (matches) at an affordable price.”
Bullingham said organisers were also looking at ways to subsidise travel costs for matchgoers, adding that an announcement confirming ticket pricing was likely to be made towards the end of 2027.
He said the 5pm kick-off for the final, which will be played at London’s Wembley Stadium on July 9th, was selected with fans in mind. The Euro 2020 decider, which was also played at Wembley, kicked off at 8pm, partially in the hopes of drawing more US viewers.
Bullingham said the earlier kick-off time was “a conversation we had with Uefa some time ago” with a mind to make it as “accessible as possible for fans”.
“Clearly, on a Sunday night, travel options are more limited than on some other evenings, so we thought that was a really good step forward,” he added.
