Soca Warriors Online Discussion Forum
Archived Boards => 2010 World Cup - South Africa => Topic started by: superoli on April 15, 2010, 02:41:34 AM
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Same crap different world cup
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/apr/15/fifa-hospitality-tickets-sepp-blatter
If you can afford to pay $1,500 (£970) for a Fifa business seat at England's opening World Cup match against the USA, then the Zurich-based company that was controversially awarded the rights to resell hospitality tickets for the 2010 and 2014 World Cups would like to hear from you.
The appointment of Match Hospitality, which won the right to sell packages in an open tender in 2007, raised eyebrows because of the involvement of Sepp Blatter's nephew Philippe. The company of which he is president and chief executive, Infront Sports & Media (which also has the host broadcaster contract for 2010 and 2014), is a minority shareholder in Match Hospitality. It paid a reported £75m for the rights to sell hospitality but has found it tough going during the global recession and expects to just break even on the 2010 tournament.
The biggest shareholder is Byrom plc, a Manchester-based firm established in 1991 by the Mexican brothers Jaime and Enrique Byrom, who had links with Blatter's predecessor, Joćo Havelange. They first became involved in providing ticketing services to Fifa for the 1986 Mexican World Cup and have since come to dominate the provision of ticketing, accommodation, travel and hospitality services to Fifa and other sporting events including the Ryder Cup.
A separate subsidiary, Match Services, has the service contract for accommodation and ticket sales for South Africa. After coming under fire from organisers in Japan and South Korea over its role in selling tickets for the tournament, Match has been blamed by the media for keeping prices high, because it reserved swaths of rooms and flights at 2007 prices. Hotels and airlines feared if they did not sign up to Match's programme they would miss out on the promised World Cup bonanza.
It has since relinquished all but 600,000 of the 1.9m bed nights it originally reserved and this month South African Airways cancelled its contract with Match for the 45,000 flights it had reserved. A spokesman for Match Hospitality said yesterday that the "vast majority" of hotel rooms released were located "in other countries, in South Africa but away from the host cities, outside of the World Cup period, or in types of accommodation that prove to be unpopular (eg timeshare)". Match's 41,000 air passengers have been rebooked with other carriers, he said.
Nor does Match accept that the hospitality prices are prohibitively expensive for a long haul World Cup in a developing country. A spokesman said that prices were pegged at 61% of the level of comparable packages in Germany, in recognition of higher travel costs.
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I eh read the article but this is mih initial reaction.... ::) ::) :banginghead: :frustrated: