World Cup Weekly: Ticket Sales Soar and Teams Setup Shop

Good news. Finally...

A good week for Brazil’s 2014 World Cup endeavor saw ticket sales skyrocketing and the 32 participating teams finalizing their base camp venues.

With the deadline for this stage of ticket sales fast approaching (this Friday, in fact!), fans have been clamoring to get tickets for this summer’s premier sporting event. FIFA have announced that, already, 3.5 million tickets have been requested from over half a million fans from 199 countries.

The Itaquerao Stadium in Sao Paulo, under construction in 2013

Of course, about 80 percent of those requests came from the football (soccer) hungry Brazillians and the remaining 20 percent, from fans abroad, for whom there is a permanently reserved 16 percent seating availability at every game of the sporting spectacle.

Tickets are being allocated by the Caixa Economica Federal bank, Brazil’s Ministry of Sport and a notary public, through a public draw scheduled this month after which, successful applicants will be notified by March 11.

The competing teams on the other hand, finalized their travel plans and their base of operations. Teams chose their base camps from FIFA’s approved list of 83 venues, each a combination of hotel and training center, spread across Brazil, and revealed their choices this past Monday.

Sao Paulo and Rio were the top two choices by competing teams with the former playing host to 15 teams including former WC winner France, Portugal and the four Central and South American teams of Costa Rica, Mexico, Colombia and Honduras. The party, though, is going to be at Rio where the hosts Brazil are going to be camped out along with European heavyweights Italy, England and the Netherlands. Minas Gerais and Bahia will host 3 teams each, aside from Rio and Sao Paulo. As a consequence, the Brazilian south-east will be where the party is this summer.

Meanwhile, across the pond...

Across the Atlantic, WC fever seems to be spreading in Europe, with Algeria and England announcing welcome news to their fans with regards to their respective teams.

Algeria’s sports ministry has announced plans wherein fans of the team may travel with the team if they want to and have opened registrations for this opportunity. Registering for this option would cover return flights, a three-star hotel accommodation, travel to the stadiums and tickets for the 3 first round games as well as one round of 16 match, should the Algerian team, which is going to be based in Sao Paulo, qualify. This a costly endeavor, however, for fans with the price set at $4,465 per person.

England fans at a pub during the 2010 WC. Source: Daily Echo

In England, Prime Minister David Cameron called for a rethink of pub opening hours after the UK Home Office turned down requests for extended operating hours on the England team’s match-days. English match-day pub culture is a hugely significant part of their football culture and the PM said that there was “significant national interest” in allowing watering holes to close their taps during England’s matches, especially the group stage game against Italy which kicks off at 11pm BST. The pubs have asked to be given permission to serve patrons until 1 am on this particular match-day and have also requested longer trading hours during the opening and closing weekends of the WC. The latter request is still “under consultation”.

-Firdose Moonda

Firdose Moonda is The Atlantic Post’s Southern Africa Correspondent, and also covers sports news. She is based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

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