Yes — two California fans have already done it. Julia Reeker Moghal and Reuben Renteria filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against StubHub in federal court in Manhattan after their World Cup 2026 tickets were cancelled or never delivered, and the Associated Press reported the case was filed around June 30 to July 2, 2026, in the Southern District of New York. The lawsuit covers buyers nationwide, not just the two named plaintiffs, and it is built around a straightforward claim: StubHub sold tickets it could not guarantee would work. Whether an individual fan can join or file a separate claim depends on what happened to their order and how StubHub responded.
Table of Contents
- What the Lawsuit Actually Alleges
- Why StubHub Tickets Could Be Cancelled in the First Place
- What StubHub Says Buyers Are Entitled To
- What a Past Settlement Says About StubHub's Refund Obligations
- Where the Case Stands and What Affected Buyers Can Do
What the Lawsuit Actually Alleges
Moghal says she paid $1,905 for three tickets to the June 18, 2026 Switzerland-Bosnia and Herzegovina group match at SoFi Stadium. She says she never received the tickets and was never refunded, according to an Associated Press account carried by TheWorldCupGuide.com. Renteria says he paid $2,294 for two tickets to the June 18, 2026 Mexico-South Korea match in Guadalajara, Mexico.
He told the AP, as reported by WTHI-TV, that he was refunded only after making repeated complaints to StubHub, and that the refund never covered what he spent traveling to Mexico for a match he could not attend. The complaint accuses StubHub of false and misleading sales practices — selling tickets as valid and deliverable when, under FIFA's rules, they were vulnerable to cancellation at any time. It seeks at least $5 million in damages for the proposed class of U.S. buyers, an order stopping StubHub from selling World Cup tickets going forward, and disgorgement of the profits StubHub made from the affected sales, according to Reuters and AP reporting carried by CTV News.
Why StubHub Tickets Could Be Cancelled in the First Place
The root problem is who controls World Cup tickets. FIFA's official terms allow resale only through FIFA's own resale platform, which charges a 30% surcharge on top of the original price. Tickets resold anywhere else — StubHub, Vivid Seats, SeatGeek — "may be declared invalid or cancelled at any time without notice," according to FIFA's ticket terms as summarized by TheWorldCupGuide.com.
That rule is why a ticket bought on StubHub could vanish even though the transaction itself looked normal. FIFA has said it has no visibility into or control over secondary-market sales on third-party platforms, and it has told fans directly to buy only through its own resale channel, according to AP and Reuters reporting. In practice, that leaves StubHub selling inventory it cannot fully back, and buyers finding out only after they have already paid, booked travel, or both.
What StubHub Says Buyers Are Entitled To
StubHub has declined to comment on the pending suit. It has said its "FanProtect Guarantee" promises buyers either replacement tickets or a full refund when a purchased ticket does not work out, and it has pointed to FIFA's own ticketing infrastructure — not its platform — as the source of the problems, according to the AP.
Separately, StubHub's own newsroom guidance sets out when that guarantee applies: buyers on reputable marketplaces, including StubHub, are entitled to a refund when an event is formally cancelled outright. A postponed or rescheduled event does not trigger the same right, per StubHub's published buyer's guide. The distinction matters for World Cup buyers: a match that was played as scheduled, but whose ticket was separately invalidated or never delivered, is not the same scenario StubHub's guide addresses, and that gap is a central part of what the lawsuit is testing.
What a Past Settlement Says About StubHub's Refund Obligations
This is not StubHub's first legal fight over refund policy. In 2021, StubHub reached a roughly $2 million multistate settlement with state attorneys general, including Minnesota and Maryland, after it unilaterally narrowed its refund guarantee in March 2020.
The resulting consent order requires StubHub to honor the refund policy that was in effect at the time of purchase and bars it from retroactively changing that policy without the buyer's consent, according to the Minnesota Attorney General's office. That precedent is directly relevant to the World Cup claims. If a buyer purchased a ticket under one refund promise and StubHub later denied the refund on different grounds, the 2021 consent order is the kind of prior enforcement action that could inform how a court or regulator views the same pattern now.
Where the Case Stands and What Affected Buyers Can Do
As of this reporting, no court ruling or settlement has been reached. The case remains in its early pleading stage in the Southern District of New York, according to AP and Reuters reporting.
It has not yet been certified as a class action, and no claims process exists yet for other affected buyers. Fans who paid for World Cup tickets through StubHub and had them cancelled, invalidated, or never delivered have a few concrete options while the case proceeds:.
- Request a refund directly from StubHub under the FanProtect Guarantee, citing the event-cancellation standard from its own buyer's guide.
- Keep every record of the purchase: confirmation emails, payment receipts, any correspondence with StubHub about the ticket's status.
- Document related losses, such as nonrefundable travel booked around the match, since Renteria's experience shows StubHub's refund did not necessarily cover those costs.
- Watch for class certification or a settlement announcement in the Southern District of New York case, since that is what would open a claims process to the broader group of affected buyers.
- Consider a small-claims or individual complaint if a direct refund request is denied and the amount at stake does not justify waiting on the class action's outcome.