T&TFF makes request for 10,101 World Cup tickets.
By: Nigel Simon, Corey Connelly (Guardian).[/size]
The T&T Football Federation has officially put in a request for eight per cent of the tickets available for the three matches involving the Soca Warriors at the World Cup finals which comes off in Germany from June 9 to July 9. This was confirmed by Oliver Camps, president of the T&TFF and its special advisor Austin Jack Warner, yesterday.
Asked how many tickets were requested, Warner said the Federation had asked for the maximum eight per cent. Pressed to give an exact figure, Warner noted that this will not be known until a reply from FIFA was received.
Guardian checks reveal that should FIFA allocate the full quota of tickets to T&T based on the Purchasable Ticket Capacity (PTC) of the venues, the T&TFF could find itself with a total of 10,101 tickets for the three matches.
On that basis, T&T will receive 4,061 tickets for the match against Sweden on June 10 at the Westfalen Stadion in Dortmund which has a PTC of 50,768 spectators.
For the next two matches, the tickets decrease to 3,074 for the June 15 game against England at the Franken Stadion, Nuremberg which has a PTC of 38,437 while 2,966 tickets is available for the match versus Paraguay on June 20 at the Fritz Walter Stadion in Kaiserslautern which has a PTC of 37,084 spectators.
Asked what will happen when the tickets reach the T&TFF and how they will be be sold, Camps said the TTFF must wait and see what was the exact allocation.
“Our next step will be to determine a format on how we will be selling the tickets to the general public because at the moment we know for sure that the demand for tickets will surpass the supply,” stated Camps.
Warner had revealed on Wednesday that there were 8,000 requests for tickets.
Tickets for all three categories.
WHILE he was unable to ask for more than the alloted eight per cent of tickets, Camps noted that they had also made application for three categrories of tickets that were available from four for the Group B matches. The three categories carry prices of 100, 60 and 45 Euros or TT $758.97, TT $455. 38 and TT $341.47 per match.
Open sales.
World Cup tickets allocated to the T&TFF will be made available to the entire population of T&T to purchase.
This was the view of both Camps and Warner when asked who will have first preference to the purchase of the tickets.
Warner said when the tickets are given to the T&TFF, anyone who applied will get tickets. “How many at this point in time, we can’t say,” he said.
“But, I will tell you that Simpaul’s will get tickets as everybody else and the tickets that Simpaul’s will get will be made public and can be justified. But, nothing so far has been allocated to Simpaul’s or anybody else.”
Questions had been earlier raised when Simpaul’s Travel Service began advertising packages, inclusive of tickets, in the daily newspapers as it was felt that the company had infact earned the right to be the sole sellers of tickets for T&T group matches.
However Warner has since made it known that the tickets that were being advertised and sold by Simpaul’s were purchased through an European tour operator long before the Soca Warriors had even qualified for Germany. “What they (tour operator) have done is to give Simpaul’s the right to use the title of exclusive tour operator.”
