To be fair, GP said that FIFA is corrupt, not that FIFA is either profit-maximizing nor out to light the goose that lays the golden egg on fire.

I know it's hard to imagine in the US, what with our quarterly-profit-maximizing corruption, but it is possible to be corrupt and still have to balance long-term concerns like "keep the graft flowing".

To be fair, most of the scalpers are FIFA.

The trick to getting away with being corrupt is to as corrupt as you can without your marks/customers/voters/whatever revolting¹. Switching ticket sales to an auction format would likely add enough friction that many people² wouldn't bother, bringing the price back down, or would make a very public noise about how unfair it feels.

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[1] or authorities taking action, but that usually comes after the marks/customers/voters/whatever speaking up loud enough, unless by “taking action” you mean “taking a piece of the action” by way of being corruptible themselves.

[2] from those who do, or might in future, play along with the current race-to-buy-at-fixed-teered-rates system.

Ironically it’s the thing that will destroy many sports. People worldwide watch the premier league for the atmosphere. That comes from working class people singing and following their team. There’s a reason Newcastle fans out-sing the home crowd at Old Trafford every year, even when we’re losing.

Do you realize you also need to pay for hotels and flights and food and etc? In such situations of course you'd sell them. People talk as if the ticket is even the problem and that it's cheap to go otherwise.

The existence of scalpers is the proof

This, but for everything: industrial modernity, pizza, jazz, and in general nearly all music and culture of note (it's true that some high culture is actually good, though it oftentimes is a thin rebadge of something working people had already been doing for a long time): working people have done almost literally everything that matters throughout the entirety of history. Rich people should be grateful we don't turn them into (delicious) sausage and leave it at that.

This and plenty of other problems that plague the society now and over the past centuries could be solved by eliminating the distinction and gap between "rich" and "poor".

Why should poor people be allowed to enjoy things?

nonsense, the lowest strata of working society has never had it so good, unfortunately things are still going to be out of reach, perhaps what the comment above said was a little harsh but there is truth to it, if what you love about the sport is merely its accessibility then find or start a new one (that the rich will appropriate in a couple of hundred years).

Mate poor people never went to any world cup. I find it funny to watch rich guys discuss why it is too expensive to buy a ticket TO THE WORLD CUP. Like that was never a thing people afforded unless you happen to have the luck of your life and live next to one of the stadiums. Most people go to zero ticketed cultural or sports events per year where I'm from, and that's at the country level before you even slice by poor people.

It's like watching millionaires discussing that nowadays poor people can't afford to go on a rocket to space.

Right. I believe Fusion organizers are quite open to getting contacted by those who want to perform there (besides music - I have no idea how the music lineup works), so in that sense it's open to everyone, but it's still all planned out in advance. They also get a few thousand people to help with build-up and tear-down in exchange for free tickets.

Last year they had some weird cyborg racing thing going on, and I also remember people performing a dance routine on top of very bendy tall poles. Last two years or more, they had a system of phones that usually connect you to the wrong place, and I met one of those involved people outside the event (twice actually). There is definitely random stuff happening, but yeah, as I said, it isn't Burning Man.