500,000 Request World Cup Tickets

World football governing body FIFA has revealed that it has received 500,000 World Cup ticket requests in the third phase of the sales process, only 10 days after the allocation opened.

386,300 of those tickets were requested by South African residents (77% of the total applications), while 114,237 tickets applied for came from the rest of the world.

‘In comparison with the previous editions of the FIFA World Cups, the latest ticket applications figures are impressive,’ commented Horst Schmidt, chairperson of the FIFA ticketing sub-committee.

The United States heads the list of foreign countries for this phase with 22,942 ticket requests, followed by the United Kingdom (20,232), Mexico (7,981), Germany (7,697), Australia (6,277) and Brazil (4,760).

The current sales phase, where around 1 million tickets are available, runs until 22nd January, 2010.