It’s no exaggeration to say the preparations for the Fifa World Cup in Brazil have been faulty, haphazard and panicked. And ticketing is no exception.
At the time of writing, 2.7 million tickets for the World Cup’s 64 games had been gobbled up by fans who applied via Fifa’s online portal — the only validated method of procuring a golden ticket to South America’s football carnival. Of these, 58 per cent have been sold to football crazy Brazilians.
Fifa has warned that fans buying tickets from touts online will not be allowed entry into matches. They have employed anti-touting firm MATCH to search the internet to unearth invalid ticket sales in an attempt to prevent supporters from being ripped-off by black market tickets selling well beyond face value. It means fans who’ve bought tickets online and will later travel thousands of miles to South America this month could be turned away and banned from stadiums.
There are a lot of tickets still up for grabs, especially for second-tier matches in Cuiaba, Manaus and Fortaleza, according to Fifa. Football’s governing body announced on June 3 it would put up an extra 180,000 tickets for sale online at www.fifa.com/tickets. Tickets are reportedly still available for all 64 matches in Brazil. They can be purchased online as well as at ticketing centres in the 12 World Cup venues across Brazil. There are a number of international ticket sales websites, including Excite, StubHub and eBay, reselling marked-up tickets.
Where to find tickets
So how do you go about getting your hands on an elusive World Cup ticket?
Tickets are ID-specific, and you may be asked to produce a photo ID to confirm that the ticket is yours at the stadium. Also be prepared to show the debit/credit card used to buy the ticket. Head to Fifa.com. Fifa’s final phase of ticket sales runs until July 13. To register, you need to create a Fifa account, replete with all the online sign-up trivialities (including a blurry Captcha test), which take another ten minutes of your precious time before you can book Russia versus South Korea or Nigeria versus Bosnia Herzegovina.
Availability of seats is shown using a colour-coded system — green for plentiful tickets remaining, yellow for a medium supply, red for low availability and black for sell-outs. Prices for most first-round matches range from $27 (about Dh100) to $158. Tickets to the final matches reach nearly $900.
Online sellers
Fifa and the Brazilian government insist that all tickets purchased for the World Cup should come directly from Fifa. However, it goes without saying that there are other sources, as tickets purchased from Fifa originally wind up being auctioned on various websites. But Brazil’s government has also said there will be no action taken against either eBay or StubHub in Brazil.
A quick search on bidding website eBay allows you to select a preferred date, stadium and ticket category for most games.
Prices range from $100 to commence bidding on low-end tickets and go all the way into the tens of thousands if you want to “Buy it Now” without having to fend off other bidders.
Ticketbis is selling tickets for popular matches such as England versus Italy from $390 to $1,811 and Spain versus The Netherlands from $224 to $2,392.
US-based Viagogo lists an entire range of tickets, including every group game and knockout round, starting at $10.91 (Switzerland vs Honduras on June 25) and reaching $4,839 for the World Cup Final in Rio on July 13.
The tickets available on Excite range from $2,039 for group matches, all the way up to $8,800 for semi-final tickets, which could see Germany face Argentina in Sao Paulo on July 9.
