02/19/2009

The sale of tickets for the FIFA football World Cup 2010 in South Africa will start on Friday but, due to the worldwide financial crisis, the International Football Association FIFA fear a slack demand in comparison to the World Cup 2006 in Germany. "It would be stupid of me to pretend that the worldwide recession would have no influence on the World Cup. But the problem is that we do not yet know in which manner the World Cup will be influenced by it. Therefore, it remains our aim to sell every ticket for every stadium", said FIFA vice president David Will who is the FIFA responsible person for the World Cup ticketing.

In this first ticketing stage until 15 April, only 740.000 tickets of about three million tickets overall will be offered. As the fixtures of the World Cup in South Africa (11 June until 11 July 2010) will be decided on 4 December at the group drawing in Capetown, it's first of all only possible to order so-called optional tickets via internet on the FIFA-homepage, like before the World Cup 2006 in Germany. Ticket prices between eleven and 700 euro.

The prices for the tickets, which will be offered in four different categories, vary from eleven to 700 euro for the most expensive ticket for the final. The fans can buy four tickets per match for seven encounters altogether. In the run-up to the World Cup in Germany, 20 million orders were registered in the first ticketing stage for 750.000 tickets available.

The cheapest tickets of category four are exclusively reserved for the South African inhabitants. It's the intention of the FIFA to enable the poor inhabitants to visit the matches of the first World Cup on an African continent. However, this will also effect a roaring black market. "It's very important that no tickets will be offered on the black market. It happens very easy to be involved in ticket fraud" said Jaime Bryom, chairwoman of MATCH who are effecting the ticketing on behalf of the FIFA.