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Australian hands on World Cup tickets

16th April, 2014
15

If the World Cup was decided by ticket sales, Australia would finish fifth.

Australians hold about 50,000 tickets for soccer’s showpiece event starting in June in Brazil, Football Federation Australia (FFA) says.

The FFA says about 8000 Australians have tickets, the fifth-most of competing nations.

And on a per capita basis, Australia tops all other countries, according to a major worldwide ticket marketplace website.

The website viagogo says a survey of its search trend reveals Australia has the highest demand for tickets to the Brazil World Cup, and Australians are spending an average of more than $1270 on tickets.

“Australia’s love affair with sport is at its peak with the World Cup, it’s easily our most popular international event, with over 2.5 million ticket searches,” viagogo spokesman Alex Levenson said on Wednesday.

A total of about 3.3 million tickets will be sold for the World Cup.

Some 2.5 million tickets have already have been allocated, including through FIFA’s hospitality programs, while the general public has purchased about 1.5 million tickets.

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FIFA opened the final online sales phase overnight and tickets for almost two-thirds of matches sold out within hours.

Only 15 of the 64 games still had tickets available 10 hours into the sales phase, which released nearly 200,000 tickets on a first-come, first-serve basis.

Australia’s encounter with Spain in Curitiba on June 23 was one of 10 high-demand games with tickets not available from the beginning.

Others on the protected list include the cup opener between Brazil and Croatia in Sao Paulo on June 12 and the final at Rio de Janiero’s famed Maracana Stadium on July 13.

In FIFA’s last online sales phase, Brazilian citizens purchased some 63 per cent of the tickets, followed by fans from the US, Colombia, Argentina, Germany, Mexico, France, England, Chile and Australia.

FIFA is expected to put more tickets on sale when it knows more about the seating charts at the the three of the 12 World Cup venues still yet to be completed.

From June 1, remaining tickets can only be purchased over the counter at FIFA ticketing centres in Brazil.

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