Johannesburg, May 28 (DPA) For the second time in two months football fans in South Africa queued through the night for tickets to the final of the World Cup after extra tickets went on sale Friday two weeks before kick-off.
FIFA made an extra 90,000 World Cup tickets covering all 64 games available Friday, including around 800 tickets to the final on July 11.
But frustration reigned again as FIFA’s ticketing system crashed just after the tickets went on sale at 9 a.m., Johannesburg’s 702 Radio reported.
The system also crashed on the day tickets went on sale over the counter in South Africa April 15.
Hundreds of people were standing in line outside ticketing centres in Johannesburg and Cape Town when the sale start. Some had braved chilly overnight temperatures of under 7 degrees in the hope of securing tickets to games that had previously been listed as sold out.
Besides the final, many people were hoping to book a place at the opening between South Africa and Mexico in Johannesburg’s Soccer City stadium June 11.
In total, 160,000 tickets out of 2.88 million for sale were still available for purchase by Friday morning.
FIFA says it has sold 96 per cent of the tickets so far and that the extra tickets became available after the finalisation of seating arrangements.
At various stages over the past few months extra tickets have become available as FIFA’s ticketing agency Match returned tickets from unsold World Cup packages and football associations around the world also returned unsold tickets from their allocation.
The tickets are being sold in FIFA ticketing centres in the nine host cities, in branches of First National Bank, in select supermarkets and through FIFA’s internet site and call centre.
