Random selection draw for the first phase of ticket sales for the 2010 FIFA World CupTM completed
The random selection draw for the first phase of ticket sales for the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ took place on Wednesday 15th April at the UK offices of MATCH Services, the professional services company selected by FIFA to provide a turn-key ticketing solution for the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™, located at SEAMOS House, Cheadle, England. The procedure, completed by a computer program, included all oversubscribed matches (52), as well as all team-specific ticket series for all those teams that were oversubscribed (39). The random selection draw lasted about two hours and was conducted in the presence of Public Notary Miss Valerie Howard. Following the completion of the random selection draw, the successful applications were validated one last time to identify any multiple applications that may have got through earlier electronic checks.
Each applicant was able to apply for a maximum of four tickets per match and for a maximum of seven matches only. Out of the total of 1,862,319 tickets requested from 205 countries, 555,871 tickets were drawn successfully. Of those, 245,948 tickets were drawn to South African residents - this corresponds to 44 per cent of all tickets successfully drawn during this first phase of ticket sales. Outside the host country, the highest number of tickets drawn was to residents of the United States (69,208 tickets), followed by the United Kingdom (39,421 tickets) and Germany (29,330 tickets). From the applications received, the most popular team was England, for which a total of 228,822 team-specific tickets (TST) were requested and for which the total number of available TSTs was 8,895. With regard to individual match tickets, the most popular ticket category was Category 4 and the most heavily oversubscribed match was the final, by a factor of 3,000 per cent.
"The whole draw procedure worked smoothly. Of course, we would have liked to please even more football fans at this stage, but there will be other ticket sales phases, the next one starting on 4 May. By implementing an electronic random selection draw, we are able to guarantee that the whole procedure remains fair and all applicants have an equal chance. This is very important to us," said David Will, FIFA Honorary Vice-President and chairman of the FIFA Ticketing Sub-Committee.
"We are obviously happy to see the huge number of South Africans that have successfully secured tickets for next year's FIFA World Cup. But of course we will continue to encourage all other South Africans as well as fellow Africans to apply for their tickets during the second phase so as not to miss out on this once in a lifetime experience," emphasised Danny Jordaan, CEO of the 2010 FIFA World Cup Organising Committee South Africa.
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