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| Fifa Fiasco with Ticketing Sales Continues |
 World Cup brass are now dumping the leftovers, the last of their ticket inventory to South Africans - due to underestimation of the corporate hospitality market. Rather than the 70-30 percent split between overseas and local ticketing, FIFA is finding itself with less than 50 per cent coming from overseas. Addressing an industry audience in London, South Africa tourism minister Marthinus van Schalkwyk stated that South Africa is now expecting between 250,000 and 300,000 overseas diehard football fans for World Cup 2010 - and that could even be lower - depending on which nations qualify and which are knocked out.
The numbers are way down from earlier FIFA estimates of one million visitors, and even scaling below the 400,000 guests quoted by FIFA just a few weeks ago.
Van Schalkwyk also asked why African visitors had been forced to buy tickets in advance over the internet despite the fact that Internet usage is low on the continent. As it turns out, many Africans - particularly in the north, don't have a Mastercard or and iPad at hand to make the buy. The fact that foreign football fans also have to collect their tickets once landing in South Africa is also proving to be a supreme hassle according to the South Africa tourism minister. FIFA president Sepp Blatter recently quipped: "All the word is focused on South Africa - and all the world will look at what happened in the African continent when, finally, there was an organization called FIFA that said 'We trust South Africa with such a big competition." For their effort, FIFA has banked a record $3.2 billion in media and marketing revenues - before the first ball is kicked. The UK Telegraph reports that FIFA's handling of the hospitality programme in the World Cup to be held in South Africa is already deemed a failure and as EU Ticket News reported recently, Blatter made the award to MATCH hospitality, knowing that his own nephew, Philippe Blatter, would benefit as he's a shareholder in the company. Match was given 380,000 tickets but recently returned ten per cent of the tickets which are now up for general sale. Match won the hospitality rights by forking out over €100 million. Related Articles: Hundreds of ticketing professionals attend 2nd annual Ticket Summit in New York City by Alfred Branch Jr.
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