World Cup ticket sales missing goals
Reporting from Johannesburg, South Africa — The line for a chance to buy tickets for the World Cup soccer final snaked like a yellow-striped python over the polished granite floor of the shopping mall.
Dozens of fans clad in the yellow shirts of the South African national soccer team known as Bafana Bafana arrived Friday eager to show their optimistic patriotism. But their joy was frayed by hours of waiting, while computer systems crashed and tickets dribbled out.
At the head of the line was poisonous anger and raised voices; at its tail, sluggish resignation.
“There were so many mess-ups from the beginning,” said Costa Vlassis, 37, who was in line at the Checkers supermarket in Sandton City shopping mall by 1 a.m., but had seen only a handful of tickets sold by 2 p.m. “FIFA keeps on promising that the ticket situation will improve. But the system keeps crashing.”
Just two weeks before the matches begin, South Africa’s moment on the world stage threatens to be damaged by a host of problems most immediately evidenced by ticket glitches.
FIFA, world soccer’s governing body, announced a day earlier that the last 800 tickets for the final and about 160,000 tickets across all 64 matches remained available for sale. But Friday’s sales resulted in the latest in a string of ticketing problems and other blunders by FIFA — whose general secretary apologized for the ticketing delays — as the World Cup comes to South Africa for the first time beginning June 11.
As hosts of one of the international community’s most celebrated events, FIFA officials had promised that the World Cup would have an African character, and yet have been accused of being tone deaf as to some African concerns. African performers were initially poorly represented in the opening concert, for example, until criticism forced a change in the lineup.
But disappointing ticket sales, especially in the rest of Africa, have trumped other worries as a potential embarrassment for the host country and the soccer federation. Many critics said the organization’s online system and ticket prices — listed as high as $900 for the final — were inaccessible to many Africans, where few have credit cards or buy online.
Only 40,000 tickets were sold to 11,300 Africans outside South Africa, about a quarter the number expected. FIFA said that about 96% of the total tickets had been sold; its target was to reach at least between 97% and 98%.
According to South Africa’s tourism minister, Marthinus van Schalkwyk, 300,000 foreign visitors are expected (including from elsewhere in Africa), compared with the 450,000 initially projected.
Analysts have put the lower-than-expected numbers down to security concerns, the recession and the high cost for visitors.
Many airfares to South Africa were three to four times higher than their January prices, according to the website Moneyweb, which carried out an analysis of ticket price increases for major airlines. Some hotels had also doubled their rates, according to the site.
There have been other problems, including properly filling orders.
One Cape Town businessman, Tom Donaldson, who last year bought 24 tickets, including semifinal tickets in Cape Town, was given 24 wheelchair seats for the wrong games. His son spent $20,000 on tickets for his wife and two friends to see the games, according to the South African Press Assn.. It took six weeks and repeated visits to the FIFA office before Donaldson was given the correct seats.
On Friday, scuffles broke out in some lines and thousands of frustrated fans waited all day, many of them with no hope of getting tickets.
FIFA General Secretary Jerome Valcke apologized over the system crash, which mirrored similar problems in earlier over-the-counter sales and followed FIFA promises that it wouldn’t happen again.
“Today I would like to sincerely apologize to all the fans that have been affected by the problems in the ticketing sales system,” Valcke said.
FIFA earlier made thousands of tickets available to South African residents for $20 or complimentary to provide an opportunity for more people from the host country to watch games.
Vlassis, who was in line for what he called a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, applied for tickets in an online lottery system at the start of the year. But thousands missed out on those tickets.
Bheki Sibanyoni, 50, who runs a small employment agency, went to Soweto at midnight to line up to buy. But there were already nearly 800 people waiting, so he drove to Sandton, arriving about 1 a.m. to find a few dozen people ahead of him. Earlier, he had tried repeatedly to get tickets online.
“We South Africans, we are not used to buying tickets online. I don’t know what happened. It’s a bit confusing. You only get acknowledgement of your application, but you don’t get any response. You don’t know who to contact. I felt bad about FIFA after that.”
Sibanyoni and others milled about. They all knew exactly what number in line they were and guarded the places of those who wanted to get a drink or snack. A newcomer sauntered to the front of the queue and tried to pretend he’d been waiting all morning.
“People have been waiting here since 1 o’clock in the morning,” Vlassis told him icily. “When they see you and you don’t have a number, they’re going to lynch you. Just stick around and see.”
