By Andrew Warshaw in Belo Horizonte
June 20 – Two ticket touts have been arrested after infiltrating one of the official FIFA hotels in Rio de Janeiro, FIFA marketing director Thierry Weil revealed at a news briefing today. FIFA called police to the Sofitel hotel near the famous Copacabana beach and “the reaction was immediate,” Weil said.
Those arrested had a number of tickets in their possession originally held by “many different sources” including football federations, FIFA sponsors and the general public, Weil said.
Pressed by reporters to identify them, he said this wasn’t fair since the tickets had clearly been passed on down the chain without the knowledge of the original recipients, adding that FIFA was trying to trace the actual individuals who illegally re-sold them.
“I think it would be fundamentally wrong to do a finger pointing via the press,” said Weil, adding that FIFA’s commercial affiliates received more than 200,000 match tickets for the 64-match tournament. “It’s not fair on those who made genuine promotions. We are going down to the individual who has actually received the ticket.”
But, he said, legal action was being considered against whoever passed on the tickets to the touts.
“For me it is amazing to see touts coming to the official FIFA hotel, sitting in between FIFA people and selling tickets without any problem,” said Weil who also urged fans to beware of black market sales and being refused entry at stadiums.
One of those arrested was French-speaking and in all about 50 tickets “in groups of two or three” were confiscated, 10 of which were originally issued to national football associations, Weil said.
The cancelled tickets were put back on sale at their face value – even sometimes on the day of games.
Meanwhile, Weil warned fans who lose their tickets or have had them stolen not to expect to have them re-issued.
“We cannot re-issue tickets because otherwise we could end up with having far more people inside than we should,” he said.
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