Texas AG Ken Paxton investigates StubHub over World Cup ticket cancellations

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton opened a formal investigation into StubHub on July 3, 2026, after his office received complaints that the ticket resale platform canceled FIFA World Cup 2026 orders as late as hours before kickoff, according to Bloomberg and local Texas outlets covering the case.

Why It Matters

Houston and Dallas are the only two Texas cities hosting World Cup matches this summer, and Paxton's office says some fans learned their tickets were void with little warning, in some cases after already traveling to the city. The investigation adds a state consumer-protection dimension to a problem that has been building across the tournament's host cities since ticket sales opened.

Details

Paxton's office says the probe will examine whether StubHub misled buyers or sold tickets it did not actually hold — a practice known as "ghost ticketing," where a seller lists and charges for inventory before securing the actual tickets. Reported cases include a Toronto buyer whose tickets for a Houston match were canceled six days out, a Cypress, Texas family whose seats for a match involving Portugal were pulled shortly before kickoff, and a Tampa couple who lost tickets to a quarterfinal match. In each case cited by local reporters, the affected fans only received replacement tickets after contacting media outlets.

StubHub has said it is "heartbroken" over the experiences and has attributed the cancellations to ticket-transfer problems tied to changes in FIFA's own ticketing system rather than a shortage of underlying inventory. Paxton's office disputes that framing and is asking Texans who bought World Cup tickets through StubHub and did not receive them, or received materially worse seats than they paid for, to file complaints with the Attorney General's Consumer Protection Division.

Implications

The Texas probe is the most concrete regulatory action yet against a resale platform over World Cup ticketing, and it comes as similar complaints mount in other host cities. A finding that StubHub sold tickets before actually acquiring them could expose the company to consumer-protection penalties beyond Texas and add pressure on FIFA to tighten how resale platforms access its ticketing pipeline ahead of the tournament's remaining matches.

This story was reported by Bloomberg, with additional local reporting from KPRC Click2Houston.