Weil: Mission is for tickets to go to fans

Before the draw for the FIFA Confederations Cup Brazil 2013, FIFA Director of Marketing Thierry Weil and Brazil’s Executive Secretary of the Ministry of Sport, Luis Fernandes, answered media questions at a round-table meeting in Sao Paulo. The main point of the discussion was the handover of 50,000 Tickets from FIFA to the Government, which will be donated to the indigenous people and to the Bolsa Família – a social welfare program aimed at helping low-income families. “It’s a kind gesture from FIFA. We are happy about this gesture and now we have to see how we will manage to distribute those 50,000 tickets, because at the moment, this has not been foreseen in the ticketing system,” said Luis Fernandes, supported by Thierry Weil, who went on to explain in more detail that the tickets will have to be evenly spread out over all the matches. Weil also explained the ticketing system and clarified the amount that are allocated to FIFA’s partners and Sponsors. “The World Cup in Brazil is extremely attractive for everybody, for Fans and for Sponsors. Our main mission is to give tickets to the fans. 80 per cent of all those tickets that Sponsors are buying will go to the fans anyhow, either through sweepstakes, competitions or other activations. The Sponsors have until the end of January to place their order. After that, tickets that have not been used will also go to the fans.” Tour operators can not offer competitive packages as such, as FIFA decided not to have a Tour Operator Program. “Fans should be careful as there are no legitimate packages", says Weil. A Ticket pre-sale phase for the FIFA Confederations Cup started recently, and will be followed by a public sale starting on 3 December, after the Official Draw for the event. Orders will be collected and they will go into a random draw, meaning that fans will have an equal chance, whether they order on the first or the last day of the order window. “Currently, 125,000 Tickets have already been sold for the FIFA Confederations Cup, which is a new record. This is something we definitely did not expect,” said Weil. More than 90 per cent of the tickets have been purchased from Brazil and the demand will be much higher from the visiting teams, once they know who and where they will be playing. “Whatever we do at the World Cup, we will ahead of time do at the Confederations Cup. It’s good that we have tested the ticketing pre-sales phase, because we had some problems and we can learn from this for the World Cup.” FIFA