Horrors. The profiteers running this year's World Cup are forcing fans to shell out thousands for a single ticket.

But they're not. FIFA, which oversees the once-every-four-years soccer tournament, is slapping astounding prices on the tickets. No one has to buy them.

This should be very obvious.

That said, some products are priced in ways that understandably bring out villagers with pitchforks. Bread in 18th-century Europe, for example. Rapidly rising prices for the "staff of life" helped foment the French Revolution. The peasants demanded what they deemed a "just price."

I don't know what's the "just price" to sit in one of the 85,500 seats at a stadium in New Jersey. Tickets for the World Cup Final to be held there are being offered in the many thousands.

If someone chooses to pay more than $8,000, the starting price on the SeatGeek page, what's that to me? The inability to see a World Cup game in person is not my idea, or any sane human's idea, of deprivation. And, you know, the games will all be on TV.

The rabid passions that explode after soccer games in Europe and Latin America are hard for the average American to understand. A sports columnist for La Stampa, a newspaper in Turin, Italy, once told me that after writing something critical about one of the local team's star players, he woke up the next morning to find a death threat scrawled on the brick wall facing his apartment window.

Clearly, FIFA (Federation Internationale de Football Association) is treating the 2026 games to be played in 16 North American cities as an opportunity to squeeze the sport's well-to-do fans, especially in the United States.

The attorneys general of New York and New Jersey have served FIFA with subpoenas, demanding it reveal its sales practices. Are fans being misled? If so, there may be a case. But this seems more a case of FIFA extracting thousands from willing buyers for its tickets. I don't understand why anyone would pay so much to see a game, but if they want to and can do it, what's that to me?

Scalpers peddle wildly overpriced tickets to shows, concerts and various sporting events. Even the box offices are charging prices that seem shocking to many. But the seats get filled.

An acquaintance confessed that she and her mate recently paid $1,800 to see Bruce Springsteen reminisce about his working-class struggle. The "intimate" setting was Boston's 19,000-seat TD Garden (TD as in TD Bank).

"Crazy but worth it," she said.

Ticket prices are a touchy subject for FIFA. Outside the U.S., soccer has been considered the peoples' game. And there was a time when the federation exercised more self-control. In 1994, the U.S. Soccer Federation proposed charging $1,000 for a ticket to the final at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. FIFA put its foot down on what seemed an exorbitant price at the time. It didn't want to upset the fans, so FIFA claimed.

To keep the fig leaf of "affordability" in place, FIFA this year is issuing 104,000 tickets at the bargain price of $60 each. That sounds like a lot of tickets, but it's less than 2% of the 6 million to be sold.

The other tickets are being tagged through "dynamic pricing." That means the price changes according to demand. This is similar to Uber surge pricing, whereby the cost of a ride rises at times when demands for the service are high.

FIFA says it hopes to rake in $11 billion from the upcoming World Cup, with the revenues to be distributed to its 211 member nations. Is that the explanation for high prices? If so, so be it.

Follow Froma Harrop on X @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Photo credit: Fauzan Saari at Unsplash