ZURICH / PR: A total of 3,505,656 ticket requests were placed by half a million fans from 199 countries during the second sales phase for the 2014 FIFA World Cup™.

Almost 80% of the people who asked for tickets are Brazilians, who requested just above 2.6 million tickets for 62 of the 64 matches that were on sale (tickets for the opening match and the final are temporarily unavailable).

The continued high global demand for the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil™ is compelling evidence of rising interest in the tournament, which is due to be played in June and July.

Fans from the 32 participating teams still have until 7 February 2014 to request tickets via the special section on FIFA.com. It is important to note that only nationals or residents of the respective team’s country can apply for these tickets.

For each game, 16% of the tickets are reserved for the fans of both teams (8% per team per game). To date, FIFA has received requests from 95,848 fans for a total of 585,350 supporter tickets for the participating teams.

The electronic draw will be carried out in February in the presence of representatives of the Caixa Economica Federal Bank and the Brazilian Ministry of Sport, as well as a notary public. The overall draw procedure has been structured in such a way that tickets returned by other stakeholders such as participating teams, the hospitality rights holder, Media Rights Licensees and Marketing Affiliates will be included in the random selection draw to ensure that more ticket requests from the general public can be fullfilled.

All applicants will be informed by e-mail or text as to whether or not their application has been successful – either fully or partially – by 11 March 2014. In order to ensure that the overall draw process can be concluded in time ahead of the start of the next sales phase, it was decided to postpone the start of the next period by two weeks. Therefore, the next sales phase, which
will be on a first come, first served basis, will commence on 12 March 2014 at 12.00 CET/08.00 BRT (Brasilia time).

“With a little more than 3 million tickets available at the 12 stadiums, the requests are at least ten times more than the inventory we have available. Naturally, this level of demand can cause some disappointment, dissatisfaction and incomprehension among football supporters. This is the biggest problem with ticketing for the FIFA World Cup – one we cannot unfortunately solve to everybody’s satisfaction, but it is a great sign of the huge anticipation for the event,” explained Thierry Weil, FIFA Marketing Director in charge of ticketing.

To watch the FIFA World Cup™ games live in the stadiums, all spectators, including children of all ages, must buy tickets. It is important to remind applicants that they must have sufficient funds in their account, as should their request be successful, payment will be processed immediately. If it is not possible to collect the payment, the request will be cancelled and the reserved tickets will be allocated to other fans who applied for  tickets.

FIFA would like to reiterate that FIFA.com is the only place where tickets for the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil™ are on sale, please see further details here.