Soccer Fans Grab Last Chance For World Cup Tickets

The organizing committee for the 2006 World Cup in Germany expects demand to soar when the fourth sales period of 250,000 tickets begins on Monday at 12:00 noon CET (1100 GMT). Following Friday's draw fans of the 32 competing nations now know where and when their teams are playing and a mad ticket rush is anticipated.

"We can sense the interest from participating teams and from neighboring countries increasing enormously," said Horst R. Schmidt, vice-president of the organizing committee.

Tickets from world and national associations

Fans from abroad, if they didn't try to order tickets blindly in one of the first three phases, have two paths to choose from when ordering this time.

They can turn to their national teams. The 32 countries' individual associations all received an allocation of eight percent of the tickets for the group phase matches they are playing in. In addition, there are "conditional tickets" that can be ordered. These are the knockout stage matches and will be filled if your country advances to that stage.

The national associations dictate the sales process in their country.

The world soccer body FIFA, which has alone sold tickets so far, also has more on sale. The opening match between Germany and Costa Rica is already sold out and there is only a limited supply for the most in-demand matches, such as the finals and semifinals.

The deadline for this phase is January 15, 2006 and the lottery will be held on January 31. Any unsold tickets then will be offered on a first come, first served basis starting February 15.

First phases massively oversubscribed

The possibility that at that point, there are any more tickets remaining in the hands of FIFA or the 32 national associations must be close to nil. When the first sales window started earlier this year, there were over eight million orders for 812,000 tickets. Up to now, 80 percent of the tickets available have been snapped up by Europeans according to the World Cup committee.

"We assume the demand will far outstrip the contingent this time again. There isn't a fairer method to distribute the tickets than through a lottery," said Schmidt.

Naturally, many tickets will be returned over the course of the next six months, for which a last minute window will be opened starting on May 1 and running to the end of the tournament on July 9.

Ticket prices range from 35 euros ($41) for the cheapest seats at group games (excluding the opening match) to 600 euros ($706) for the best seats at the final in Berlin.