Archive for February, 2010

With less than four months to the kick-off of the 2010 FIFA World Cup™ FIFA has been alerted to a growing number of e-mails and scams fraudulently claiming to be associated or linked with the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ and/or FIFA World Cup Organising Committee South Africa.

These scams generally inform recipients that they have been selected as lottery prize winners and have won substantial sums of money, or invite recipients to submit a tender. Recipients are then persuaded to:

• submit personal information or to part with money as an up front payment, or
• forward money to enable them to enter the tender process.

FIFA strongly advises the public to treat any correspondence concerning lottery draws, tenders or competitions with suspicion and extreme caution and urges people not to provide any personal or financial details if requested to do so.

FIFA reiterates that any such correspondence has no connection with or authorisation from FIFA and is in no way related to the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™, following previous media releases on this topic dating back to 2005 and 2007.

All information received in South Africa should be forwarded to the South African Police Service. The relevant contact details as well as information about these scams can be found at:

http://www.saps.gov.za/org_profiles/core_function_components/commercial/419_task_team.htm.

Non-South African residents should contact their relevant local authorities.

The fourth ticket sales phase will kick off on Tuesday, 9 February 2010 at 12.00 (Central European Time).

This phase, one of the last chances for fans to make sure that they do not miss out on attending the first FIFA World Cup™ on African soil, will run for 58 days until 7 April 2010. Tickets will be allocated on a “first come, first served, subject to availability” basis. Applications can be made via http://www.fifa.com/2010 or (for South African residents only) at FNB branches.

The third ticketing sales phase for the 2010 FIFA World Cup South Africa™ was finally concluded today. The 2010 FIFA World Cup Ticketing Centre has ensured that the maximum number of available tickets have been included in the random selection draw for the general public. Extensive validation of the results of the random selection draw process has been conducted in order to ensure the FIFA Sales Regulations have been adhered to.

A total of 1,206,865 tickets have been requested from 192 countries by the general public (excluding those tickets that have been sold through the participating teams to their fans). Of this total, 585,175 tickets were drawn successfully, and 413,072 (70.6 per cent) of those were allocated to South African residents.

Outside the host country, the United States received the highest number of tickets drawn (35,262), followed by the United Kingdom (21,614), Mexico (11,893), Australia (11,804), Germany (9,692), Brazil (5,891), Canada (4,642), France (4,268) and Israel (3,677). In Africa, Botswana remains the leading country behind the hosts, with a total of 1,587 tickets drawn, followed by Mozambique (1,142). Kenya completes the top three African countries with 785 tickets.

With regard to individual match tickets, category 4 was the most popular and the final received the highest number of applications. All applicants will be informed via e-mail or SMS whether they were completely or partially successful by Monday.

Additional information regarding the fourth sales phase: tickets are available at this stage for 53 of the 64 matches. Matches 5, 11, 37, 45, 54, 56, 59, 60, 61, 62 and 64 are not available in this phase. In addition, team-specific ticket series (TST) for England and Brazil are not available.

In recognition of Visa’s valued sponsorship, FIFA prefers Visa for ticket sales.