October 4 – With a week to go before the end of the first phase of ticket sales for the 2014 World Cup, over 4.5 million tickets have been requested for the 64 matches.
Around 77% of requests have come from host nation Brazil with around 3.4 million tickets applied for. Argentinians have made 223,686 requests with the USA in third place with 175,122.
Thierry Weil, FIFA Marketing Director, said: “This impressive total so far underlines the extraordinary level of interest in this 20th FIFA World Cup being played next year in the country of the five-time world champions. However, football fans who apply by next Thursday have as good a chance of obtaining tickets as those who have already applied, as all applications made from the beginning to the end of the sales window are collected together and drawn on a lottery basis when the number of requests exceeds the tickets available.”
Although demand has been strong for team specific tickets, the strength of interest in venue specific tickets is very good news for organisers, who will be confident that most matches will be played in front of full houses, except perhaps for those in Manaus, in the Amazon basin and the Arena Pantanal in Cuiaba, thought there is time for FIFA to focus marketing strategies for those games.
This is in marked contrast to South Africa where local audiences took little interest in matches not involving the home side. Brazil received more requests for tickets in the first 24 hours of the registration process, than South Africa did in the whole of the first round of ticket sales.
The news will also be welcomed by Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, whose popularity took a dip after protests during the Confederations Cup, which showed public discontent over the cost of the infrastructure build in-country, including World Cup build, in preference to investment in balancing the inequalities of education and health systems.
About 1 million tickets will be distributed at the end of this first round, with a second round starting after the qualifying teams are drawn into groups in December. FIFA have made a particular effort to ensure that some tickets are available for local low-income fans, with some tickets cheaper than for some Brazilian soccer championships.
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