Mike Brooks
Audio By Carbonatix
What was supposed to be a day of cultural celebration, years in the making, turned into a disappointment for Rozina Taguchi and her parents on June 14.
For two years, the trio has vowed to travel wherever necessary to see Team Japan play in the FIFA 2026 World Cup. Her father was born and raised in Japan, and growing up, Taguchi was taught to have a deep sense of Japanese pride. The family lives in Oklahoma, but maintains a Dallas residence, so when it was announced last year that the Blue Samurai would play two matches at Dallas Stadium, it was a no-brainer that they’d attend.
“We were thrilled,” said Taguchi. “This was going to be a great family opportunity.”
They paid $1,500 for three tickets to last Sunday’s game using the third-party ticketing platform StubHub. In the days leading up to the match, the ticketing app promised that their passes would appear between 24 and 48 hours ahead of the game. But Sunday morning, they woke up only to find out the tickets had never materialized.
StubHub notified the Taguchis that the seller whose tickets they’d bought had never handed the tickets over to the platform. They were initially promised a refund or replacement tickets, but demand for the game had left only 1% of tickets available, they were told. After repeatedly refreshing the platform’s replacement ticket page, no seats were available.
They gave up after driving to the stadium and unsuccessfully bargaining with the box office there.
“On our walk to the stadium, we passed a family that was going back to their car, and they said that with StubHub, the same thing happened to them,” Taguchi said. “It was just kind of a disaster.”
Dozens of stories similar to Taguchi’s emerged across social media over the World Cup’s opening days. There was the Katy man whose $3,000 tickets disappeared the morning of the match, just like Taguchi’s. Then there was the North Texas couple whose tickets to the Japan vs. Netherlands game were replaced only after WFAA began investigating.
The issue is rampant across secondary ticket markets. Dubbed “ghost tickets,” sellers frequently list tickets that they don’t actually have but plan to obtain, hoping to make money by marking up the price on a third-party site. Only sometimes, the seller doesn’t manage to get a ticket, leaving unsuspecting buyers empty-handed at the last minute, often after spending money on travel, hotels or taking time off work.
A spokesperson for StubHub said the phenomenon occurs “extremely rarely.” The company investigates sellers “who fail to provide tickets after they have been sold,” and punishment may include banning them from using the platform in the future. For its part, FIFA strongly discourages customers to avoid purchasing tickets through third-party sellers and warns that “unoffical” tickets “may be invalid and may be subject to cancellation without notice.”
That doesn’t offer much comfort to the Taguchi family, who missed a thrilling match in which Japan forced a draw.
Since Sunday, Taguchi said StubHub representatives have been responsive to her issue. But offers of goodwill, such as a 20% voucher she was given in addition to a refund of her tickets, aren’t enough to make up for the expenses her family incurred traveling to last weekend’s game. There was the gas to get from Oklahoma to Dallas and the parking pass they bought outside of Dallas Stadium. Her dad, a physician, rearranged his work schedule to get the time off.
He plans to file reports against StubHub with the state attorney general, the Better Business Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission, Taguchi said.
Japan will be back in Dallas on June 25 to face off against Sweden, and the family plans to try again. This time they bought their tickets through the FIFA resale platform because they don’t trust any third-party platforms not to have the same ghost ticketing issue.
“We are still hoping to go, however, it does still say on the website that we won’t get our barcode for the tickets until 24 hours before the game. Obviously, we’re very concerned about that after what just happened.” Taguchi said. “We did pay a lot more for these tickets, and because they were so much more, only me and my dad are going to go and my mom is not able to go. We really took a hit.”
