Kelly Mongillo of Barrie, Ont., began frantically calling StubHub customer service in April to ask for assurances that her World Cup tickets were still valid.
Mongillo paid StubHub, a scalper resale website, $1,700 Cdn in August 2025 for two tickets, figuring she was getting a deal for a game in New Jersey on June 13. She grew up watching World Cup soccer with her father, Larry, and was planning the trip of a lifetime with the 72-year-old to watch Brazil play Morocco.
“I started making some calls to StubHub because I had become aware that other people were having ticketing issues from FIFA and other third-party-type selling sites,” Mongillo told CBC News.
“I was constantly just given reassurances that ‘it’s no problem. Don’t worry. We’re going to put a note on your file to watch your order. Everything looks good on our end. Don’t worry.'”
After weeks of calls, emails and chats with virtual assistants, Mongillo ended up becoming another disenchanted fan who discovered the perils of buying tickets to high-demand events from resale sites.
She said she and her dad flew out of Toronto early last Friday and booked into their hotel in New Jersey.
“I travelled based on those assurances they continuously made me that I would be covered and they had my back,” she said.
Last Saturday, a few hours before the game, Mongillo and her father boarded a shuttle to the stadium, but her tickets still hadn’t been loaded into her digital wallet.
She called StubHub one last time, only to be told her tickets were no longer available.
“I was shocked. My dad was devastated,” she recounted. “I thought this can’t be happening. I thought I did my due diligence. I thought I’d covered all my bases. Because I had anticipated this…. I had continuously asked them what’s going to happen if I’m already there.”
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Mongillo said she’s been calling StubHub’s customer relations line every day, asking it to honour its “FanProtect Guarantee.” She’s demanding a refund not just for her tickets but also for the heartbreak, plus the expense of their airline fares, hotel and shuttles.
A manager told her that resellers are not delivering World Cup tickets purchased months ago, she said, because they can make more money selling to other customers now that the tournament has begun and market prices have soared.
“What’s the point of buying tickets in advance?” Mongillo said. “I think they ruined World Cup for us, which was something that was so special to me and him. Now my dad has no interest in being involved in the rest of the tournament.”
Mongillo is not alone. Hundreds of people have taken to social media complaining and seeking refunds after StubHub and SeatGeek cancelled their World Cup tickets at the last minute.
Jeremy Wright of Austin, Texas, recounts on Reddit that he bought his wife World Cup tickets from StubHub last fall as a Christmas gift. The pair drove four hours to Dallas on Saturday, booked into a hotel and were excited to attend a game on Sunday — only to be notified a few hours beforehand that the tickets were no longer available.
“[We’re] missing a World Cup match that cannot be replaced,” Wright wrote. “I do not understand how a company can wait until the day of the event to admit they cannot provide tickets that were purchased 10 months earlier.”
The post has attracted hundreds of comments from people with similar stories.
After being contacted by CBC News, StubHub spokesperson Jack Sterne said his company will reimburse Kelly Mongillo and her father. “Our team has been in touch with her to confirm that her refund is being processed and see if we can get her and her father to another World Cup match.”
Mongillo said StubHub contacted her late Thursday and has now provided her with a pair of tickets to a Germany vs. Ivory Coast game in Toronto on Saturday.
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Sterne acknowledged that World Cup ticketing — which is controlled by FIFA, soccer’s governing body — has presented major problems for the ticket resale website.
“We understand that attending the World Cup represents a significant investment in time and money, and we take our responsibility to every fan who books through our platform seriously,” he wrote in an email.
“Many of the issues fans are facing trace back to the event organizer’s technology infrastructure, newly announced transfer restrictions, and a new app that was launched just a month ago ahead of such a major event.”
Adair Roberts of Toronto took her 19-year-old son, James, to Cleveland to see Bruce Springsteen in concert on May 22 with $1,000 tickets she bought from Ticketmaster’s resale platform.
“I paid a ridiculous amount of money for them. We don’t know how many more tours Springsteen is going to do. So we splashed out!” she told CBC News.
But because the Rocket Arena concert venue uses SeatGeek as its primary ticket company, Roberts was instructed to download the electronic tickets onto a SeatGeek app.
Hours before last month’s concert, she received an email from SeatGeek advising Roberts that her tickets had been removed, without explanation.
“I thought, ‘Oh my gosh … what has just happened?'” Roberts recalled. “First I thought, ‘Oh, this has got to be spam!’ Then when I indeed checked my SeatGeek app and the tickets weren’t there, I thought I’d been hacked.”
Out of pocket for travel, an hour before showtime and without tickets, she decided to go online and pay for a second set of tickets to ensure she and her son saw Springsteen.
“I just thought, ‘Wow, in for a penny, in for a pound!’ So I bought another set of tickets. I said to James, ‘We’re skipping dinner. We’re getting into the arena right now so these tickets can’t get hacked!'”
Once inside, Roberts confronted a couple sitting in her original seats. They explained they’d just bought the seats hours earlier from an online scalper.
She’s been fighting with Ticketmaster and SeatGeek ever since, seeking a refund and an explanation.
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On Wednesday, CBC News contacted both companies. SeatGeek reviewed Roberts’ complaint and issued her a refund for her second set of tickets, plus a $900 coupon for future tickets.
“We reviewed this customer’s experience and agree that it fell short of the standard we aim to provide,” SeatGeek spokesperson Cameron Papp wrote in an email.
SeatGeek declined to say what happened to Roberts’ original tickets, but in a statement, Papp said, “We’ve decided to provide a full refund for the replacement tickets the customer purchased through SeatGeek, along with additional compensation to address the situation.
“We recognize the frustration and inconvenience this caused, particularly given the travel involved, and we’re taking steps to make things right.”
Roberts said she’s pleased with the resolution but regrets it takes calls from the media for ticket resale websites to take customer complaints seriously.
“I’d like other people to know that this can happen and to be really, really aware that when you are buying on resellers and you’re using these apps … they are not necessarily secure,” Roberts warned. “Be extremely careful when you are purchasing from resale sites.”
