Huge demand for World Cup tickets

As expected Football Federation Australia was yesterday inundated with applications for tickets to Australia's matches at the 2006 FIFA World Cup in Germany.

With only 8,500 tickets available, demand was always going to exceed supply.

Applications were received from 9am AEDST with over 22,000 received by 5pm including 10,000 applications in the first 30 minutes.

"It's quite an overwhelming response and a spectacular demand for World Cup tickets," said FFA Chief Executive John O'Neill.

"We said last Friday that demand would exceed supply and its certainly done that."

"No applications were taken before 9:00am."

"We opened for business at 9:00am this morning and I am pleased to say the system held up; it was put under a lot of pressure with 14,000 applications received up to 11:30am which is obviously a substantial number."

"Over the next four days we will be processing those applications with an objective of notifying the successful applicants of their ticket allocation from this Friday."

"It's a process that had integrity, it was open and as transparent as it possibly could have been, everyone has been given an equal chance. In terms of processing those applications, they will be processed upon the order in which they were received from 9am AEDST."

The FFA continues to work with both FIFA and the FIFA World Cup Local Organising Committee (LOC) in Germany in an attempt to secure additional tickets for the Australian public, however there is no guarantee that additional tickets will become available.

A summary of ticketing options can be found on www.fifaworldcup.com

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