FIFA fans have been presented with a unique opportunity to get tickets, some of them pitchside, for free ahead of the matches. As many as 2,500 free tickets across 64 matches in the USA have been given away by Verizon (the official telecommunications partner for the event), which has partnered with FIFA for ticketing operations. Although available majorly for those living within a certain distance of the stadium where the respective matches are to take place, platforms are opening a brief time window to fans, or loyal subscribers in the area, to secure their spots on the sidelines ahead of the scheduled drop, and for no cost!
Fans who have long been loyal to their fandoms are being made exceptions among the audience at live events such as these. Being allowed to avail special privileges as fans who have always gone the extra mile and shown their loyalty for their favourite artists and sportspersons, these are being touted as rewards for their consistent dedication, or so the platforms say.
Verizon has been dropping free FIFA tickets periodically over the past seven months. Interestingly, this opportunity is only open to Verizon mobile and home customers in particular, who must go through a particular process on the Verizon website to sign up to be on the reserved list — which fills up on a first-come-first-serve basis.
Spotify has also come out with a new feature called Spotify Reserved, where fans who feature among the top listens and shared lists of certain artists will get two reserved tickets for free. Spotify Reserved was launched on May 21, and advertises itself as a broader investment into live music across artists no matter which stage of their career they are in. Under this feature, Spotify plans to identify fans through streams, shares, and other Spotify activity, and will also monitor the activity of Premium users to ensure these are real human fans and not bots. Here, the fans do not have the opportunity to register or sign up to be considered for tickets — rather they have to up their time spent on the app, and rack up more ‘listens’ to have hope of being the lucky ones. The official release does mention that the availability of these reserved tickets will vary by artist, tour and location as well.
Earlier this year, global K-Pop band BTS had also pulled a similar fan-centric move, wherein they hosted a fan lottery. At their free open air concert BTS THE COMEBACK LIVE: ARIRANG, which was livestreamed on Netflix. The entire concert was reservation based, along with a global fan lottery organised by WeVerse, the global fandom platform. The Weverse Global raffle was conducted exclusively for members of BTS’ official fan club, ARMY, and eligibility for the raffle required purchasing BTS’ upcoming album during the designated entry period. The raffle was open to fans of all nationalities, with winners chosen through a lottery system.
Subscription Drivers
These strategies to encourage ticket reservations by platforms, claiming to involve more real fans of the artists or sports, come hand in hand with ramping up subscriptions, views, occupied stadium seats, merchandise sales, and users for themselves. The Llangollen Pavilion, a famed concert venue in North Wales, is also giving away some free tickets for this summer’s Live and Llangollen Pavillion show.
Like the concert every year, the Llangollen Treasure Hunt launched in 2024 has also returned. And to celebrate 79 years of the festival, 79 pairs of golden tickets will be hidden across the Pavilion grounds — each one redeemable for some of the summer’s biggest shows. Meanwhile, Punjabi pop sensation Karan Aujla offered his fans free tickets as an apology. After mishaps at a Holi concert he was performing at, Aujla announced that his next show in Mumbai would be free for all those who held a pass to the previous concert and were disappointed with the facilities.
The process of obtaining tickets for large scale live events can be frustrating and often heartbreaking — refreshing the portal for hours often only to come up empty, or be lucky enough to a spot in the nosebleeds of the venues. These exercises, reservation tactics and loyalty rewards are innovative ways to offer more hope to fans, and diversify the agencies through which tickets can be obtained. With events like FIFA, and streaming platforms like Spotify also employing these methods, fans’ responses at to the success of these allowances will decide how effective they are, and whom they really serve.