Tony Wang8 min readThe Official FIFA World Cup App Scores 2.65 Stars. Its Ticket App Scores 1.79.
FIFA's World Cup app averages 2.65 stars, its ticket app 1.79 — FIFA's year-round app holds 4.62. Real App Store and Google Play data, two days post-final.
FIFA runs three separate apps for this World Cup, and its own users rate them nothing alike. The tournament companion app averages 2.65 stars. Its dedicated ticket-delivery app — the one that determines whether you actually get into the stadium — averages 1.79, with more than three out of every four ratings at the lowest possible score. FIFA's separate, year-round football app, unrelated to this specific tournament, holds 4.62. Same organization, the same six weeks, a 2.8-star spread. We pulled the App Store and Google Play histograms directly, plus the most recent reviews on each app, to see exactly what's driving it.
Three apps, one World Cup, one 2.8-star spread
FIFA didn't build one World Cup app — it built (or commissioned) three, and split entirely different jobs across them:
| App | Role | App Store rating | App Store ratings (n) | Google Play rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FWC2026 Mobile Tickets | Ticket delivery & stadium entry — the only way in with a purchased ticket | 1.79★ | 390 | 2.21★ |
| FIFA World Cup 2026 | Tournament companion — scores, fixtures, fantasy football | 2.65★ | 712 | 2.97★ |
| FIFA Official App | Year-round football app — clubs, transfers, unrelated to this tournament | 4.62★ | 2,163 | 4.52★ |
The tickets app carries a bundle id of io.tixngo.app.fifatickets — it's a white-labeled product built by a third-party ticketing vendor, TixNgo, not FIFA's in-house app team. That's context, not an excuse: it's still the one app every ticket-holder is forced to use to get through the gate.
The full 1–5 star breakdown makes the gap even clearer than the averages:
Show the full star-by-star breakdown (App Store)
| App | 1★ | 2★ | 3★ | 4★ | 5★ | Total ratings |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FWC2026 Mobile Tickets | 300 (76.9%) | 10 | 8 | 5 | 67 (17.2%) | 390 |
| FIFA World Cup 2026 | 311 (43.7%) | 100 | 39 | 50 | 212 (29.8%) | 712 |
| FIFA Official App | 130 (6.0%) | 16 | 33 | 184 | 1,800 (83.2%) | 2,163 |
It got worse as the stakes went up, not better
If the low ratings were mostly early-tournament teething problems, the most recent reviews should look better than the lifetime average. They look worse:
| App | Lifetime 1★ share | 1★ share, 100 most recent reviews | Window covered |
|---|---|---|---|
| FWC2026 Mobile Tickets | 76.9% | 84% | May 20 – Jul 17, 2026 |
| FIFA World Cup 2026 | 43.7% | 58% | Jul 12 – Jul 20, 2026 |
The tournament app's most recent 100 Google Play reviews land almost entirely inside the knockout rounds and the final itself — exactly the window when usage, and the cost of the app failing, is highest. The tickets app's recent window runs from late May through five days before the final, covering the exact stretch NPR and other outlets were reporting ticket-delivery problems across the tournament.
What people are actually angry about
For the ticket app, the complaints aren't cosmetic — they're about whether the ticket you paid for actually gets you into the building:
| What the negative review describes | Share of sampled 1–2★ reviews |
|---|---|
| Can't access or transfer a ticket already paid for | 41.2% |
| Locked out by login or verification failures | 27.1% |
| Confusing navigation or design | 18.8% |
| Slow to load or freezes | 12.9% |
The reviews are specific and dated. One App Store review from June 19 reads simply: "Lost 2100 Dollars worth of tickets, CANNOT GET INTO BRAZIL GAME." Another, from July 1, describes paying $2,600 for tickets, then spending 90 minutes and four password resets trying to retrieve them the night before a flight to the match — "still no tickets so I will try again tomorrow. #Fail." A June 28 review: "total failure doesn't work on Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. Can not even verify login. Timeout error." A July 6 Google Play review: "day of match, app won't work — can't access the tickets I purchased."
One July 2 App Store review is essentially a first-person case study of the "ghost ticket" pattern NPR reported on this same tournament: the reviewer bought Senegal-vs-Belgium tickets through SeatGeek on June 12 as a birthday present for their son, was told the tickets would be available June 30, and found nothing on either the FIFA app or website that day or the next. At the stadium box office on match day, they learned the reseller had taken the seats back on June 25 — five days before FIFA had told them delivery would happen.
The tournament app's complaints run a different pattern — less about access, more about the app simply working:
| What the negative review describes | Share of sampled 1–2★ reviews |
|---|---|
| Confusing navigation or design | 23.7% |
| Slow to load | 11.9% |
| Crashes or freezes | 8.5% |
"The app functions like it's been rushed through development," reads one July 3 review. "I've had to update the app twice in the past two days. For an app that only needs to be used for three weeks. It's inexcusable." A July 19 review, the day after the final: "here all is messed up nothing can be done by this app. no live match video no score post nothing." Others describe the app draining 60% of their phone's battery running in the background during a match, and one reviewer flags that ticket access is buried inside a separate app entirely — "it's also mysteriously buried so far down into the app without proper navigation."
It isn't unanimous complaint — both apps have five-star reviews too, including a couple of workaround tips from users who found the login loop by turning off their VPN, or by transferring tickets to a second account when the app claimed they were "already logged in elsewhere." But those are the exceptions in the sample, not the rule.
This isn't the first sign of ticketing trouble this tournament
Crawlora already covered the pricing side of this story: final tickets that reached $2.3 million on FIFA's own resale marketplace, a first-time dynamic-pricing system, and the "slow ticketing" pattern of metering out inventory in batches. That post used anti-bot scanning and contemporaneous reporting — Al Jazeera, Newsweek, NPR — as its evidence. This one uses a completely different data source, structured app-review mining, and lands on the same underlying story from the other side: real people, with real money on the line, unable to get a purchased ticket to actually work.
How we measured this
Pulled live via Crawlora's App Store (appstore-ratings for the full histogram, appstore-reviews for individual review text) and Google Play (googleplay-reviews) endpoints on July 21, 2026, US storefront. The three apps: FIFA World Cup 2026 (App Store id 6476561442 / Google Play com.fifa.tournament), FWC2026 Mobile Tickets (App Store id 6532603739 / Google Play io.tixngo.app.fifatickets), and FIFA Official App (App Store id 756904853 / Google Play com.fifa.fifaapp.android).
Star histograms are each app's full lifetime rating distribution as Apple reports it — a complete population, not a sample. The "100 most recent reviews" figures are exactly that: the newest 100 Google Play reviews returned per app at pull time, sorted newest-first, which is why the two apps' windows cover different date ranges (the tickets app's most recent 100 reviews stretch back to late May; the tournament app's only back to July 12 — a sign the tournament app is simply getting reviewed far more often right now). Complaint-theme percentages are keyword-matched counts over the 1–2 star reviews with review text in that same 100-review sample, not the full lifetime population — treat them as directional, not exhaustive, and expect some reviews to touch more than one theme.
Pull App Store and Google Play data yourself
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Related reading: World Cup Final Tickets Hit $2.3M — The Anti-Bot Data Behind Ticketing · More Apps, Fewer Hits: 18,000 App-Store Winners, by Birth Year · What America Searched For After the 2026 World Cup Final
Frequently asked questions
How bad are the ratings for FIFA's official World Cup 2026 app?
Bad, and getting worse. The tournament companion app ("FIFA World Cup 2026," with scores, fixtures and fantasy football) averages 2.65 stars on the App Store across 712 ratings and 2.97 on Google Play. In the 100 most recent Google Play reviews (July 12–20, 2026), 58% were 1-star — worse than its 43.7% lifetime rate, meaning the app got worse, not better, as the stakes rose through the knockout rounds.
What's FIFA's worst-rated World Cup app?
FWC2026 Mobile Tickets — the separate app that's the only way to access and enter with a purchased ticket. It averages 1.79 stars on the App Store (390 ratings, 76.9% of them 1-star) and 2.21 on Google Play. In its 100 most recent Google Play reviews, 84% were 1-star.
Why is FIFA's ticket app rated so much worse than its tournament app?
The complaints are functional, not cosmetic. Of the negative reviews sampled, 41.2% specifically describe being unable to access or transfer tickets already paid for, and 27.1% describe being locked out by login or verification failures — both on the one app that determines whether you get into the stadium. Real examples: one reviewer describes losing $2,100 and being unable to enter a Brazil match; another paid $2,600 and spent 90 minutes and four password resets still without tickets the night before a flight to the game.
Does FIFA have any well-rated apps?
Yes — its separate, year-round "FIFA Official App" (club football, transfers, fantasy, unrelated to this specific tournament) holds 4.62 stars on the App Store across 2,163 ratings and 4.52 on Google Play, with only 6.0% of ratings at 1-star. The contrast shows the problem is specific to the two tournament-built apps, not FIFA's app-development capability generally.
What are people actually complaining about in the World Cup tournament app?
Mostly navigation and performance, not access. In the sample of negative reviews, 23.7% describe confusing navigation or UI, 11.9% describe slow loading, and 8.5% describe crashes or freezes. Several reviewers also flag heavy battery drain from background activity and delayed live-score notifications.
How was this measured?
Pulled live via Crawlora's App Store ratings/reviews and Google Play reviews endpoints on July 21, 2026, two days after the July 19 final. The star histograms are each app's lifetime cumulative rating distribution. The "getting worse over time" reads come from the 100 most recent reviews on each app at pull time — a recent sample, not a full census — and the complaint-theme percentages are keyword-tagged counts over the negative (1–2 star) reviews with review text in that same sample.