So, why did I spend three days staring at ticket resale platforms instead of enjoying my weekend? Simple. My nephew, young lad, just got into this football thing, and he’s decided he has to see Portugal play Scotland, which they might do during the Nations League or maybe some random friendly in 2024. He’s got maybe three hundred quid to his name, and I promised him I’d figure out if he was dreaming or if this was actually possible without getting completely ripped off by some internet vulture.
I wasn’t trying to predict the future or analyze market dynamics, I was just trying to find a straight answer for the kid. This wasn’t easy because, as we all know, official sites are useless once the first batch is gone. So I put on my detective hat, poured a coffee, and I dove straight into the deep, dark end of the resale pool.
My First Move: Hunting Down the Event Details
The first step was nailing down when this hypothetical match was supposed to happen. I scoured the official UEFA calendars and the two national team schedules. Turns out, there were a few projected windows for 2024. I picked the most likely scenario—a mid-autumn fixture hosted in Lisbon, just because that generated the most data on the secondary sites. Why Lisbon? Because if you look at the price elasticity, the secondary market jumps highest for events in capital cities. That’s where the scalpers focus. I locked in this hypothetical date and venue just to stabilize the data I was pulling.
Then I hit the big resale giants. You know the names. The ones that claim to guarantee tickets but charge your firstborn child for the privilege. I didn’t trust them, but they were the only ones showing inventory.
The immediate sticker shock was massive. For the absolute cheapest seats—the ones where you need binoculars to see the pitch and you’re standing behind a support pillar—they were already asking €180 minimum. This confirmed my suspicion: my nephew was going to need serious help.
Breaking Down the Seats and Costs
To get a real average, I knew I had to ignore the ridiculous outliers (the guy selling a pair for €5,000 because they’re “limited edition”). I decided to categorize the inventory I saw into four main tiers. This required me to systematically filter and log the prices shown across multiple tabs simultaneously, refreshing every hour to catch the price fluctuations.
Here’s the messy breakdown I arrived at after two days of clicking around and logging the numbers:
- The Nosebleeds (Behind Goal/Upper Tier)
- The Corners/Lower Sides (Near the Flag)
- Midfield Sides (The Good View)
- The VIP/Hospitality Junk
This is where most of the inventory was sitting. I pulled out the twenty cheapest listings I could find consistently appearing. We’re talking right up in the rafters, often corner seats. The average price I calculated here, after stripping out the booking fees that these sites hide until the last step, was:
€220 – €310 per ticket.
These are decent seats, you can see the action, but you spend half the game squinting at the far goal. This tier had a lower volume but a slightly more stable price point. I averaged fifty data points across three different platforms to stabilize this tier.
€345 – €450 per ticket.
This is where you want to be. Between the eighteen-yard boxes, lower or mid-level. This inventory was sparse and highly volatile. Listings would pop up and vanish in minutes. I spent hours trying to confirm the sale prices rather than the asking prices, often failing. But based on confirmed asking prices:
€550 – €750 per ticket. You’re paying for the view and the convenience here.
Honestly, I only looked at these to establish the ceiling. These packages often include cheap beer and a bad buffet. They are not worth it unless your company is paying. The prices started at €1,100 and ran up to €2,500+. Completely useless for my nephew, but necessary for the full picture.
The Ugly Truth: What It Really Costs
After crunching these numbers, I went back to my nephew with the cold, hard facts. If he wants to see Portugal vs. Scotland in 2024, assuming it’s a standard, highly anticipated match:
The real, achievable, average price he’s looking at for a non-VIP ticket, bought on the secondary market, is somewhere between the Nosebleeds (€220) and the Corners (€450). We can ignore the Midfield seats because that’s just too much money for a first-timer.
I concluded that the true, realistic average price he needs to budget for, per ticket, is €335.
I shared my spreadsheet and the filtering method I used with him. My final advice was simple: If you can wait until the absolute last minute (24 hours before kick-off) and are willing to take the risk, prices on the cheapest tier often dip dramatically as scalpers panic. Sometimes you can snag one for closer to €150. But if you want certainty, you need €335 in your pocket, minimum.
So yeah, three days of my life wasted on football tickets, but at least the kid knows the score now, and he won’t get conned by some shady seller. That’s a win in my book.