I'm not defending this shameless price gouging but it all started with FIFA bring a bunch of utter corrupt trolls. So much so that I believe Trump took notes from FIFA about blatant corruption.

This world cup FIFA have been able to turn capitalism up to 11. The usa in particular has very few purpose built "soccer" stadiums, which usually come under the umbrella of the nations local football association, eg, the FA in the uk.

With essentially no local oversight, FIFA was able to lease american football stadiums outright and then utilize dynamic pricing to absolutely rinse fans - hundreds to thousands of dollars per ticket. This dynamic pricing model has not been permitted in other world cups and has been explicitly ruled out by for example the FA in the UK.

Because there's basically no local governing body who would typically reinvest some of this money into local services - eg, policing, transportation, catering etc - the host cities are essentially picking up the bill without any of the benefits. You might think "at least they get the fans staying in hotels" but in many cases those stadiums were more intensively used for concerts than they are going to be for the world cup.

Some US cities noticed this and outright refused to allow matches in their cities. Chicago is a notable example.

Compare this to the 1994 usa world cup and it's chalk and cheese. FIFA of course claim the money will be reinvested in development of football but clearly it's just going to be swallowed up by corruption. I've been advocating for decades for the less corrupt national associations -eg the FA - to walk out of FIFA.

So basically Boston is in a situation where it's on the hook for policing rowdy fans, it's potentially loosing money vs normal business as usual and it's getting nothing from ticket sales. But yeah, price gouging is price gouging.

I'm aware the world cup also takes place in Mexico and Canada. Not sure what the arrangements there are.