Brazil in the World Cup 2010

FIFA is making over three million paid tickets available for the 2010 FIFA World Cup. One million tickets have been allocated to FIFA commercial affiliates, hospitality providers, National Confederations and broadcast outlets, and the rest will be available to the general public.

The only official channel to buy tickets online for the World Cup 2010 is through the FIFA website; see prices of tickets.

Sale of tickets online is happening in five phases (actually, six phases, if we consider phase zero below):

Phase zero: FIFA published the schedule of matches of the World Cup 2010, with dates and places; each match is given a number; teams are still unknown (except for the opening match, which will have South Africa as one of the players).
People can buy tickets either individually for each match (identified by the respective number) or by sets of tickets for matches of a country (FIFA called these sets TSTS, Team Specific Ticket Series). So, for example, an English fan can buy a TSTS for all three matches of England in the first stage of the Cup, or a TSTS covering the three initial matches plus the next round, or even a TSTS for all seven matches.

Phase one: from 20 February 2009 to 31 March 2009 (closed). All people interested in tickets filled an application order (online or printed and sent through mail). Result of the applications was announced on April 15th 2009. For any given match or TSTS, if the number of applicants was lower than the number of tickets available, the purchase was confirmed; if there were more applicants than tickets, then a draw had to be conducted to determine the purchasers (the date of application is not relevant for the draw – submitting early or late makes no difference for the draw).

Phase two: from 4 May 2009 to 20 November 2009. Ticket applications submitted during this stage will be processed, subject to availability, on a first come first served basis; there is no draw involved. (Update, December 5th 2009: FIFA informed that during phases one and two 674,403 tickets were sold – 90% of tickets made available).

Phase three: from 5 December 2009 to 22 January 2010. This phase follows the same rules of phase one. The draw to select applicants will happen on February 10th 2010. The (big) difference between phase one and three is that the later will happen after the final draw of groups, and hence all matches will be known.

Phase four: 9 February 2010 to 7 April 2010. Same rules as phase two: tickets sold subject to availability on a first come first served basis.

Phase five: 15 April 2010 to 11 July 2010 (World Cup kick off is on June 11th, final match in on July 11 2010. Ticket applications will be processed on a first come first served basis, however Ticket transactions will be conducted immediately at the point of sale.

Besides these tickets for sale online, FIFA will distribute a number of tickets to all Federations which will play the finals of the World Cup, and yet more tickets to the official sponsors; Federations and sponsors will inform later how they will distribute those tickets.

FIFA has signed agreements with travel operators from around the world to sell packages to South Africa which include the tickets (the tickets are still sold by FIFA, not by the operator).

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 2:43 pm and is filed under FIFA, tickets.