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Offline E-man

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Fifa bow to pressure to allocate more seats for 2010.
« on: April 29, 2006, 11:52:58 PM »
Fifa bow to pressure to allocate more seats for 2010.
Denis Campbell The Observer)


Sunday April 30, 2006


Fans of countries playing at the World Cup will get more tickets at future tournaments after Fifa vowed to scrap its controversial practice of giving teams just 8 per cent of the seats at their matches. Stung by a growing backlash across Europe against the unfairness of its existing ticket allocation system, Fifa will heed growing calls for change by increasing the proportion going to each of the 32 finalists.

Exactly how many more tickets supporters will get has yet to be decided. But a senior Fifa source told Observer Sport: 'The entire ticketing policy for the World Cup will be reviewed and revised after Germany. There's a genuine interest to increase the 8 per cent that goes to each of the 32 countries taking part. There will be a shift in the allocation of tickets going to different segments of the market which will increase the 8 per cent. That 8 per cent figure will go up. I'm certain that will be the case.'

Article continues
Fifa president Sepp Blatter has acknowledged that ticketing arrangements for Germany have caused repeated problems and left ordinary fans frustrated. While each team was only guaranteed 8 per cent, Fifa's sponsors will share 16 per cent, while a further 11 per cent are being sold as part of hospitality packages.

'Blatter wants to make a better distribution of tickets for the public at large for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa onwards, including raising the eight per cent allocation to teams' supporters,' said a source close to the Fifa boss.

However, whatever higher figure Fifa chooses is bound to disappoint fans, who want the majority of tickets to be divided between them. Mark Perryman of the official England supporters club englandfans said each team should get 30 per cent. Fifa officials point out that their 15 sponsors' contracts - which include the right to buy 25,000 tickets each for the World Cup - help keep ticket prices low for ordinary fans and generate funds to develop the game worldwide.

Last week Observer Sport reported how senior figures in English and European football, such as England head coach Sven-Goran Eriksson, Premier League chief Richard Scudamore and players' union boss Gordon Taylor, see 8 per cent as far too little. Uefa, by contrast, give each side at the European Championship 18 per cent of the tickets.

Fifa has been coming under pressure from the media in several European countries, notably Italy, Holland and Germany, to make more tickets available to ordinary fans, especially of the 32 teams taking part. Fan groups have also begun to mobilise around the issue. Blatter is likely to face questions on the issue when he visits London on 8 May as most of the 100,000 England fans expected to travel to Germany will not have tickets.

Even Franz Beckenbauer, the president of Germany's 2006 World Cup Organising Committee, seems to sympathise with the growing demands for change. Last week he raised the spectre that some games in Germany may not be full because the tournament's 15 sponsors, including Coca-Cola and McDonald's, have not used all their 16 per cent allocation, a figure many believe is unnecessarily high. 'I hope the sponsors make the most of their tickets,' he told Germany's Tagesspiegel, adding that he expected the 12 stadiums to be 'more than 90 per cent full' because of no-shows from those with sponsors' tickets.

Fifa will be helped in making changes by the fact that it is regaining control over ticketing for 2012, after major tension with the 2006 Organising Committee, and reducing its number of sponsors from 15 to six. Those six may want fewer than the 490,000 seats which firms such as Adidas and Budweiser have been allowed to buy for Germany.

Meanwhile, tens of thousands of extra seats that have unexpectedly become available for the 64 games in Germany will be put on sale to fans tomorrow at www.fifaworldcup.com at 11am British time. They are returns from national football associations who are not competing in Germany, unsold seats from the hospitality programme and others freed up by the finalisation of exact seating plans for the 12 World Cup stadiums.

2006 Organising Committee spokesman Stephan Eiermann said the new seats were likely to include a small number for England's Group B games against Paraguay, Trinidad & Tobago and Sweden. 'There will be some more tickets available for fans to buy on a first come, first served basis, but we won't know the exact number available until Monday,' he said.

Fifa is bracing itself for the publication this week of Foul!, a new book by renowned investigative journalist Andrew Jennings, which promises to expose bribery, vote-rigging, ticketing scandals and other corruption involving senior figures in the game's global governing body.

Offline JayTheWrecker

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Re: Fifa bow to pressure to allocate more seats for 2010.
« Reply #1 on: April 30, 2006, 01:45:01 AM »
Fifa bow to pressure to allocate more seats for 2010.
Denis Campbell The Observer)




Fifa is bracing itself for the publication this week of Foul!, a new book by renowned investigative journalist Andrew Jennings, which promises to expose bribery, vote-rigging, ticketing scandals and other corruption involving senior figures in the game's global governing body.


i'm buying that book for sure. I might even buy two copies and post one to Jack Warner with my compliments
Son, there's only two things that matter in this life. Family and Football. Everything else is bullshit

Offline Brej

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Re: Fifa bow to pressure to allocate more seats for 2010.
« Reply #2 on: April 30, 2006, 03:12:04 PM »
yeah da book sounin like sum rel interestin to read

 

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