FIFA Enjoying overwhelming Ticket sales
FIFA President Sepp Blatter says that World Cup organisers in South Africa are pleased with the ticket sales and remain confident that all preparations will be complete in time for the opening match on the 11th of June.
FIFA made available 160,000 extra tickets on Friday which are selling fast with almost 80,000 tickets already sold.
Irvin Khoza, chairman of the local organising committee, says that about 97 percent of the nearly 2.9 million tickets which were made available for the 64 games have been sold and this puts South Africa on a par with Germany in 2006.
However with the demand factor for tickets still remaining, the local organising committee is confident that they might go past that mark.
After a slow start, blamed partly on a complicated internet-based ticketing system, South Africans have been quick to take up remaining seats, especially after organisers allowed over-the-counter sales and fans were seen queued for hours to buy some of the new 90,000 tickets made available this week in often-chaotic scenes.
So these were fans already in South Africa but what are other fans around the globe doing in terms of getting their match tickets, visa’s and travel arrangements sorted out in order to reach South Africa to witness one of soccers greatest events?
One bizarre example is of an English football fan who in order to get to the World Cup has travelled to south Africa after cycling, swimming and running all the way from Cirencester, England.
Rob Forbes set of on his mammoth 11,800 miles journey last October and has arrived just in time to watch his home team play its first match. The freelance ecologist said that he took on this challenge to raise money for charity. However charity apart he has ended up reaching South Africa to watch his team live in their 2010 FIFA World Cup soccer campaign.
Even the usually sleepy Lebanese mountain village of Bteghrine is bubbling with flag-fluttering football fever ahead of the 2010 South Africa World cup.
Bteghrine residents are divided between supporters of Germany and loyalists of Brazil, Lebanon’s two all-time favourites. Italy and Spain also remain in the hearts of the Lebanese people but only after the above mentioned teams.
In Pakistan as well the football mania is on the rise, go to the streets of Lyari and you will see flags and posters of different soccer stars with kids dressed up in outfits of teams that they are supporting, majority of them of course supporting Brazil.
Those who can afford to go to South Africa have bought their match tickets online through FIFA by getting their air tickets booked and pending receipt of their visas are ready to fly off to South Africa to support and cheer for their favourite teams.
However based on the amount of crowds the FIFA World Cup will be pulling into the African country, the South African High Commissions have made their visa policies a little more strict than usual just for the World Cup time period, with one of the major requirements being to display ones match ticket for a FIFA game.
A policy which on paper is hundred percent accurate but because of inconsistency from FIFA’s side and lack of apparent communication between FIFA and the South African Visa section some of the fans who have bought their tickets on the official FIFA website some time ago, are yet to receive physical ownership of their FIFA World Cup tickets, which according to FIFA have been shipped.
At the time of purchase confirmation the FIFA website did give a unique identity number to all those who purchased tickets stating that the print out of the confirmation page will be equal to displaying the ticket for visa purposes and the fans need not worry about visa complication as far as presenting the ticket is concerned.
Nevertheless it seems that this was not the case as a group of friends who had been planning their trip for the past year and had bought all their tickets together have been refused their visas on the basis that they need to present the actual tickets, one of the fans amongst this group, Yasir Ahmed says that “The South African embassy tells us to contact FIFA and get our tickets, FIFA is telling us that the confirmation page is good enough, there is a major communication gap between the two and here we are stuck with no visa, no direction and confirmations of tickets and hotels which if cancelled will not refund our money”.
Let’s hope everything works out for the best for the fans, Visa’s, South Africans, and FIFA!
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