The Key to Success:

Unable to shift its allocation of World Cup tickets mainly due to prohibitive costs of travel to South Africa, subsistence and accommodation there, the FA was forced to return unsold tickets to FIFA, despite the manner of England’s qualification raising the expectations of supporters. Further sales in South Africa are now the key to making Africa’s World Cup a success. However, the organisers remain confident that the stadiums will be full and the atmosphere very special indeed. The final phase of tickets was completed recently.

The CEO of the Organising Committee, Dr Danny Jordaan believes that 450,000 visitors will be attracted to South Africa by the World Cup – probably more, but the key to the success of the World Cup will be attendances and that requires support from the South African people. “The cheapest tickets in Korea was fifty US dollars,” he says. “The cheapest ticket in Germany was twenty-six US dollars.” So what about South Africa? How will ticket prices cater for the poorest spectators?

Jordaan wants to make sure that poorer South Africans at least are not priced out of attending their World Cup. He insists that South Africa will do even better for the poorest South African fans that will make or break this World Cup. “The cheapest ticket in 2010 is twenty US dollars,” he said, “so we will make sure that a local fan will find it cheaper in 2010 than what it was in 2006. We have created a separate category.” But Jordaan understands that there is a limit to helping the poor. It cannot be extended to all Africans, however poor.

“Now the second question is that it cannot be all of the African football fans that get in for twenty US dollars, because if they must come from Tamale to go to Johannesburg to buy the twenty US dollars ticket to watch the Black Stars, they must have an airline ticket and must have accommodation, so one of the things probably is that there would be a inability to travel anywhere outside Tamale for the poor,” Jordaan explains. “The twenty dollar tickets are for South Africans.” But would that afreet the quality of their experience?

Subsidised Ticketing:

According to Jordaan poorer fans would not have to compromise on the quality of view on offer in return for a subsidised ticket. “The stadium has good views all over, so wherever you sit you will not have an obstructed view,” he says. “The best view is on the centre line and then you go to the corners and finally behind the nets. We have separate areas demarcated at different levels and it’s all over the stadium.”

These tickets will be subsidised by wealthier fans paying more for their tickets. But won’t that create a fertile breeding ground for black market ticket sales? Jordaan is adamant that it will not be tolerated “A European fan can’t have a twenty dollar ticket,” he says emphatically, so how will they cope with the interest and desire for these tickets by fans who are not entitled to them?

The Black Market:

The black market thrived at previous World Cups – touts sold tickets brazenly at ludicrous mark ups, so why should South Africa be any different? Jordaan is convinced that it will be and has plans to thwart the activities of the touts. “Well I was at the World Cup in France and some of the English fans were buying the tickets at the rugby world cup up to £200 per ticket, so that will be a big problem at all of the major events,” he says. “I don’t want to talk about the detail, but we will do everything we can to make sure that it doesn’t happen in our country.”

How could they prevent poorer South Africans buying these subsidised tickets and selling them on for a small profit that still represents a saving for foreign fans, or considerably above the cover price if demand allows it? “We have procedures in place to stop that,” he says. “We are determined to stop that. In fact, in Britain they were passing legislation to make it a criminal offence.”

But how would they know that tickets had been resold? “It’s very simple,” says Jordaan. “If you sell ten thousand tickets to Algeria versus England to South Africans and then people turn up wearing England shirts in those seats... But I don’t want to talk about the measures now.”

There are obvious measures that could prevent the resale of tickets. Tickets for the World Cup in Germany required information about the purchaser before it would be sold, including passport number, name, credit cards details, etc. Astonishingly when the tickets arrived they didn’t even have the purchaser’s name on it. That would have been a simple means of preventing resale if you had to present identification when you show your ticket at the stadium. Could that work?

“Well that would be a simple way of dealing with it,” said Jordaan, “but I don’t want to say what we are going to do. You cannot have a massive resale of tickets. There is also the security question.”