Brazil football World Cup tickets selling well

stuff.co.nz, TALES AZZONI – Tickets for only seven of the 64 World Cup matches remain available as FIFA’s latest sales phase nears an end.

With less than five days before the sales period closes, more than 2.5 million tickets have been sold for football’s premier event. FIFA says the World Cup in Brazil is the most successful tournament in terms of ticket requests.

Most matches sold out quickly after tickets became available on March 12, but a few group-stage games are proving tougher to sell. Fans have until Tuesday to purchase tickets. The next sales phase opens on April 15.

Greece-Ivory Coast in the northeastern city of Fortaleza is the least popular match so far, according to numbers on FIFA’s ticketing website on Friday. Nigeria-Bosnia and Russia-South Korea, both in the wetlands city of Cuiaba, also have tickets still available.

The others are Uruguay-Costa Rica in Fortaleza, South Korea-Algeria in the southern city of Porto Alegre, Honduras-Switzerland in the jungle city of Manaus, and Bosnia-Iran in the northeastern city of Salvador.

FIFA doesn’t release specific numbers of tickets for each game, but the matchup between Greece and Ivory Coast on June 24 was the only one with “high availability” in three of the four sales categories.

Honduras-Switzerland was the closest to being sold out, with FIFA saying there was “low availability” only in the most expensive category.

In this sales stage, tickets were available on a first-come, first-serve basis. More than two-thirds of the matches were sold out in less than three hours. Tickets for all Brazil matches were gone in about an hour, as were all of the quarterfinals and nearly all second-round matchups in the June 12-July 13 tournament.

Tickets were not on sale for the opener between Brazil and Croatia in Sao Paulo, the final at the Maracana in Rio de Janeiro, and the semifinals in Sao Paulo and Belo Horizonte.

FIFA said about 295,000 tickets have been sold in this phase. A total of about 3.3 million tickets will be sold for the first World Cup in Brazil since 1950.

Nearly 540,000 tickets will be available for pick up beginning in May.