Cricket-mad India is currently hosting the sport's flagship event, the ODI World Cup – but fans who want to see the national team play live might have to pay thousands of dollars for the privilege.

Tickets are reselling on secondhand marketplaces for sky-high prices, while supporters are complaining that the process to buy seats for marquee games has been poorly managed.

India are set to face Pakistan in the western city of Ahmedabad on Saturday. The match-up is one of cricket's fiercest rivalries but only takes place during World Cups, because India's governing body severed ties with Pakistan's after the 2008 Mumbai terrorist attacks.

On the resale site eticketing.co, the cheapest seats sell for over 50,000 rupees ($600), while the most expensive are available for as much as 240,000 rupees, or nearly $3,000.

Meanwhile, former derivatives trader Nikhil Wadhwani told Bloomberg this week that he'd snapped up a ticket to the game for just $30 back in August – and then sold it on X for over $250, netting a 780% gain.

"I was absolutely shocked to see the demand," Wadhwani said in an interview with the outlet.

Some fans have complained that the buying process has been chaotic, creating opportunities for scalpers.

Having said the India-Pakistan clash was sold-out, the tournament's organizers put another 14,000 tickets on sale at around $20 Sunday – under 1% of what some fans have paid for seats on secondhand sites.

The official website for the World Cup says tickets for future India matches are "coming soon" – even though the Rohit Sharma-led side are slated to take on New Zealand in Dharamsala in just 10 days' time.

The ticketing fiasco is just the latest example of a trend that's emerged since the pandemic: even though the world economy is slowing down and some developed countries are flirting with a recession, people are willing to pay through the nose to see live events.

Taylor Swift fans spent thousands of dollars to see the "Anti-Hero" singer's Eras Tour, even if it meant flying to a different continent where tickets were more readily available. Seats to see Beyoncé and Olivia Rodrigo have been changing hands for similar prices.

The cost of seeing the NBA and both professional and college football live has also edged up steadily in recent years, while tickets for a series of cricket matches between arch-rivals England and Australia earlier this summer cost around 190 pounds ($230) firsthand.