It is a degrading experience to try to purchase tickets to a hugely anticipated event, and nothing fits that description better than the World Cup. So you can imagine why fans who successfully navigated the labyrinth of presale codes and lotteries and came out of it with a premium ticket might be upset to discover that their money didn't actually buy what they thought it would.
A new report from The Athletic details a devious little switcheroo that FIFA seems to have played on fans who purchased Category 1 tickets for this summer's games. For weeks, Category 1 was the most expensive ticketing tier that fans could buy into, and many of them certainly did hoping that they would be assigned a seat in the lower bowl. The seating maps that FIFA released showed that Category 1 tickets could be allocated across a wide range of seats, but certainly gave the impression that it was possible to get one close to the field.
TLDR:
You didn't know your seat, just a general area.
It seems they didn't sell all those tickets, so they gave the worst seats to people who had already paid, and created two new categories with all the best seats, charging even more for them.
If these don't sell out, it's almost guaranteed they do it again.
Every time they'll give the worst seats out, then the best seats get a new label and more expensive price tag.
I had no idea idiots were dropping this much on tickets with zero idea what seat they were actually paying for.