Football Federation and Tuboleta speak out against claims and accusations in ticket sales for Colombia vs. Argentina

Faced with the large number of complaints that were filed regarding the sale of tickets for the match between Colombia and Argentina for the 2026 World Cup qualifiers, the Colombian Football Federation and Tuboleta They made an official joint statement this Friday.

In the face of the pre-sale of tickets for clients of the FCF partner bank, Bancolombia, and the sale to the general public, there has been much criticism from fans who were unable to purchase tickets.

This Thursday, social media was flooded with complaints from bank customers who reported queues of several hours to buy tickets and revived the ghost of ticket scalping that shook the FCF a few years ago. In addition, it is reported that tickets are already being offered for resale on different platforms.

The situation was repeated this Friday with the sale to the general public, who could purchase tickets with any credit card. Users complained that they entered at 8 in the morning to make the purchase, but the story of the previous day was repeated.

Users explain that virtual queues exceed 4 hours of waiting, despite entering a few seconds after general ticket sales opened.

Other people complain that the page is removing them every two minutes and does not allow them to queue virtually to buy the ticket. In addition, users complain that the tickets sold out in less than an hour, even though they were in the queue.

FCF and Tuboleta respond

In response to the controversy, the FCF and Tuboleta stated: “⁠The Metropolitan Stadium of Barranquilla will have 25% less capacity available for this match, due to a sanction imposed by FIFA. In addition, from the available tickets, the tickets of the sponsors, institutional courtesies and those of the subscribers who purchased for all the qualifiers must be subtracted.”

Secondly, they say: “Given the expectations generated by the match, the number of purchase requests exceeds, up to three times, the capacity of the stadium. At the peak of users trying to access the pre-sale yesterday, Thursday, August 1, Tuboleta registered more than 80,000 people on its platform to access only 5,066 tickets available exclusively for clients of the bank sponsoring the National Team.”

And they argue: “⁠The high demand and low availability, added to the intention to purchase with payment methods that did not apply for the pre-sale; the attempt to acquire more than 4 tickets per user, the lack of balance in the payment method, among other reasons, prevented many people from successfully completing their purchase. However, the digital sales platform worked without any setbacks.”

Finally, they state that the offers made on various unofficial platforms correspond to scams: “This situation of low ticket availability and high demand from fans is taken advantage of by criminals to promote websites and spaces on social networks, with false offers of supposed tickets available at high prices. We call on people not to be fooled so as not to become victims of possible scams.”

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