In light of the large number of complaints regarding the ticket sales for the match between Colombia and Argentina for the 2026 World Cup qualifiers, the Colombian Football Federation and Tuboleta issued an official joint statement on August 2nd.
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Regarding the presale of tickets for customers of the bank partnered with the FCF, Bancolombia, and the general public sale, many criticisms have been received from fans who were unable to access the purchase of tickets.
On August 1st, social media was flooded with complaints from bank customers who reported waiting in line for several hours to buy tickets and revived the specter of ticket reselling that shook the FCF a few years ago. In addition, it has been reported that tickets are already being offered for resale on various platforms.
This situation repeated itself on Friday with the general public sale, where individuals could purchase tickets using any credit card. Users report that they entered at 8 AM to make a purchase, but the same story from the previous day was repeated.
Users explain that virtual queues exceed 4 hours of waiting time, despite entering just a few seconds after the general ticket sales opened.
Others report that the website is kicking them out every two minutes and does not allow them to maintain a place in the virtual queue to buy tickets. Furthermore, users claim that tickets sold out in less than an hour, even though they were in line.
FCF and Tuboleta respond
Colombian fans in Santiago
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In response to the controversy, the FCF and Tuboleta state: “The Estadio Metropolitano in Barranquilla will have 25% less available capacity for this match due to a sanction imposed by FIFA. Additionally, from the available tickets, we must subtract tickets reserved for sponsors, institutional courtesies, and those bought by season ticket holders for the entire qualifiers.”
Secondly, they say: “Given the expectation generated by the match, the number of purchase requests exceeds the stadium’s capacity by up to three times. At the peak of users attempting to access the presale yesterday, August 1st, Tuboleta registered over 80,000 people on its platform for only 5,066 tickets available exclusively for clients of the sponsor bank of the national team.”
They argue: “The high demand and low availability, combined with attempts to purchase using payment methods that were not applicable for the presale, attempts to buy more than 4 tickets per user, and insufficient balance on the payment method, among other reasons, prevented many people from successfully completing their purchase. However, the digital sales platform functioned without any glitches.”
Colombia National Team Fans
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Finally, they state that offers made on various unofficial platforms correspond to scams: “This situation of low ticket availability and high demand is seized by criminals to promote websites and social media spaces, with false offers of supposed available tickets at inflated prices. We call on everyone not to be misled to avoid becoming victims of potential scams.”
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