Pretoria - Significant delays are being experienced at the 2010 FIFA World Cup ticketing sales channels, including ticketing centres and First National Bank branches, says FIFA.
Today, an additional 90,000 tickets for all 64 matches of the tournament were set to become available through all sales channels, with a huge demand from South African fans.
The tickets include those of matches for the final, the opening game between South Africa and Mexico and the two semi-finals.
In total there are about 160 000 tickets still available for the public via the current sales channels which are FIFA.com, Call Centre, Ticketing Centres, FNB Branches nationwide and Shoprite/Checkers stores.
FIFA said 34 000 of these tickets are available in category 4 reserved for South Africans only, 28 000 tickets in category 3, 23 000 in category 2 and 75,000 in category 1.
FIFA's official service provider MATCH AG confirmed that significant delays were experienced in the sales process due to technical problems which affected all sales channels, including ticketing centres and FNB branches.
FIFA General-Secretary, Jerome Valcke said he visited the ticketing centres in Johannesburg together with LOC boss Danny Jordaan and were deeply moved by the dozens of fans who were already queuing in the hope of getting tickets.
"Today, I would like to sincerely apologise to all the fans that have been affected by the problems in the ticketing sales system.
"We have already demanded a detailed report from our service provider Match AG on the causes of these problems and are expecting that they solve the situation very soon," he said.
