Thursday, February 19, 2009

Twenty Bucks... Not Including the $3000 Air Fare

Tickets for the World Cup go on sale tomorrow. Woo hoo!

We're totally getting in line and camping out. We're rock and roll that way.

But the 2010 World Cup does pose and interesting question: How do you buy a ticket for a seat that doesn't exist?

Answer: You don't. The ticket sales just make it more of a clusterf*ck when FIFA has to take the Cup away from South Africa.

Because not only are stadiums behind schedule, but workers are on strike. They have been since February 6th (Really, how'd we miss that?): "About 400 of the [1000] construction workers at Mbombela stadium, most of them members of the National Union of Mine Workers (NUM), who have been on illegal strike were sacked on Tuesday,"

Good, fire 40% of the workforce. That'll totally accelerate the construction.

Actually we hope that South Africa pulls this off. Okay, we secretly hope that they fail and it gets scuttled to over in the States but, short of that, we still would rather see South Africa host a nice party than this become a disaster, political or otherwise.

The good news is that some of the tickets are cheap (as low as $20).

The bad news is that you don't actually purchase tickets tomorrow. Phase one (of four) starts tomorrow, where you simply apply on line for a lottery to buy.

* There are three types of sales phases: random selection (phases one and three), first-come-first-served basis (phases two and four) and a last-minute sales phase
* The first phase closes on April 15 after which applicants will be told whether or not they have succeeded in their bid to buy tickets. The second phase is from May 4-Nov. 16, the third is from Dec. 5 until Jan. 22, 2010, the fourth is from Feb. 9 to April 7 and the last one starts on April 15, 2010, when FIFA still expects tickets to be returned to the pool.
So curb your enthusiasm. For Germany, I roped about 15 people into applying on my behalf (if I recall correctly, it was unnecessarily cumbersome, right down to needing a passport number), and not a single one of the lot had won the right to actually purchase tickets. That really confirmed my suspicions that everything FIFA does it totally and 100% above board.

Of course my friend who works for a sponsor called me after the fact and said, "Oh we had all kinds of extra tickets for the semi." That being the Germany v. Italy semifinal match. Or as I like to call it now, "The greatest soccer game that I could have attended if I had more thoughtful friends." Sorry, where was I...?

Oh yeah, tickets, stadium construction issues, FIFA is corrupt, etc.

7 comments:

phil said...

Is there any real chance it would move to the US, though? We're already greasing the IOC's wheels; I don't know if there's enough graft money in kitty to get FIFA's attention.

Precious Roy said...

It's worse because I knew he was going and even called about a week before the semis and said, "Hey, my buddy and I can get a reasonably priced ticket to Amsterdam and we're thinking of going and taking the train down. Any chance you've got a line on some tickets?"

Then after he's telling me "Yeah, we had so many extras that our interns got to go."

Ass.

WhiteSpeedReceiver said...

Need World Cup Tickets? We've got plenty! Send cash and a self-addressed stamped envelope to:

J. Warner
Port of Spain
Trinidad and Tobago

EbullientFatalist said...

I would probably have a better chance of receiving funds from a Nigerian prince than getting WC tickets.

As for the Germany-Italy final, the game was the best nil-nil 118 minutes I've watched. And then the last two minutes happened.

Precious Roy said...

Yes, and the last two minutes were just as glorious.

EbullientFatalist said...

@PR: I admit I have my bias - Deutschland uber alles, etc. - but I can't stand the Eye-tals. Catennacio -v- efficiency? I'll talk efficiency any day.

I think I wept after that game.

Precious Roy said...

I got drunk after that game. Well, I was 3/4s of the way there but I kept going for a few hours. So I guess I got really, really drunk.

Felt like we (I'm half Italian) had already won the Cup at that point.