High ticket prices or not, FIFA said Wednesday it has received more than 500 million ticket requests for this year's World Cup. Soccer's organizing body said outside the host nations of the US, Mexico, and Canada, the most requests came from fans residing in Germany, England, Brazil, Spain, Portugal, Argentina, and Colombia. FIFA is asking for up to $8,680 per ticket, the AP reports. After receiving criticism, FIFA said last month it will offer $60 tickets for every game to the 48 national federations in the tournament, and the federations will decide how to distribute them to their fans who attended their previous games.
FIFA said the most-requested match in the third sales phase, which ran from Dec. 11 through Tuesday, was Colombia vs. Portugal on June 27 at Miami Gardens, Florida; followed by Mexico vs. South Korea on June 18 at Guadalajara, Mexico; the final on July 19 at East Rutherford, New Jersey; the opener between Mexico and South Africa on June 11 at Mexico City; and a second-round match on July 2 at Toronto. The organization said it will notify people about their ticket applications no earlier than Feb. 5 and will allocate them randomly for matches in which demand exceeds availability.
About 7 million individual tickets are expected to be available total for matches in the US, Canada, and Mexico, said Andrew Giuliani, head of the White House World Cup task force. FIFA said almost 2 million have been purchased, per Politico.