World Cup 2010: FIFA told to get ready for last minute crowd rush for tickets, it’s the culture.
South Africa 2010
Many factors could be accounting for the reason why ticket sales in the forthcoming World Cup Competition have not been really impressive, according to sources in London.
Lack of effective marketing of the World Cup in the continent and low level publicity may be accounting for the slow pace of ticket sales according to a London based Marketing giant.
Mr Ugo Egenamba
Ugochukwu Egenamba of UK Business Aid Limited, a business development and Marketing Establishment in a reaction to claims by a FIFA official, Jerome Valcke that he was disappointed by the number of World Cup tickets sold so far to fans said the situation with Africa have been wrongly judged.
“Many Africans countries are not as sophisticated as the case in the Western World and thus, accessibility to Television campaign is limited. This indirectly may be a factor and thus may hinder awareness about how to obtain tickets”, Mr Egenamba said.
The Marketing expert said Africans have their ways of life and this is what the World Cup body should have taken into account while planning the strategies for ticket sales.
“It will be unfair to criticise low response to ticket sales now only for the official to regret later when ticket sales at the gates surpass that of those sold through the internet.
Mr Egenamba queried:” How many Africans have got credit cards to make purchases on line. FIFA should have established this. Africans buy their tickets mostly at the stadia gates and this is another area where FIFA needs to perfect before the kick off, otherwise, there may be chaos at the gates”.
“Africans as we all know have the greatest passion for the game and it is too early to conclude that they are not watching the World Cup”.
He said the total number of the so called 40,000 tickets sold so far outside of South Africa is not even enough for Nigerians to buy, talk more of the entire Africans who actually cherish the game.
“However, the tournament is suppose to be a meaningful life-changing experience and now the reality as dawned as to the clumsiness of real life as it is in Africa”
world-cup-2010-stadia
In Nigeria, English Clubs have the largest number of English Football fans outside of England such that mini carnivals are held when big matches are played.
“We are now talking of the real World Cup. There must be logistic problems and jumping to conclusion now about ticket sales could be dangerous for the officials as they could be proven wrong on the long run, claims Bunmi Omoogun, a Sports reporter with African Voice Newspaper.
He claimed South Africa must prepare to host big crowd of fans on the eve of the tournament kick off, especially from those neighbouring countries to South Africa otherwise there will be crowd chaos.
Mr Omoogun however attributed poor transportation to some of the fans problems.
A senior Fifa official has said he was “disappointed” by the number of World Cup tickets sold to fans as the tournament kicks off in less than three weeks.
According to Jerome Valcke only 40,000 tickets have been sold in countries in the continent outside of South Africa.
The football body has faced criticism for not making tickets accessible to Africans, as most tickets were being sold via the internet.
It is the first time the World Cup is being held on African soil.
‘Priced out’
Mr Valcke – who has previously billed the event as a “real African World Cup” – said that African sales were “poor” and that Fifa would have to re-think its strategy towards Brazil, hosts of the 2014 Cup.
“It’s really not a lot of tickets when you think that we have so many African countries playing in the World Cup,” he said at a press event in South Africa.
“The system that we put in place was not perfect for South Africa and for Africa”.
He said that there were also difficulties in air travel from one African country to South Africa.
South African Tourism Minister Martinus van Schalkwyk said on Tuesday that the figures were 76% less than those forecasted for the event.
He said that only 11,300 people in Africa made ticket purchases, out of a total of 230,000 foreign fans.
In March, Mr Valcke denied that Africans were being priced out of tournaments.
While tickets in South Africa were offered at a lower price, fans in other African countries had to pay the standard amount – with the cheapest costing $80 (£54).
Critics also said that many Africans would face difficulties accessing the internet, or might not have a credit card to make purchases online.
Over 2.5 million tickets have been sold out of 3 million available for the World Cup, which begins in three weeks.
More than a million have been bought by South Africans.
Addition: BBC Sports.
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It is unfortunate many FIFA officials think the whole world is Europe-style sort of life. Africa is unique in her own way of life. The aftermath of the World Cup tourney will show the world that World up is synonymous with Africa. The tournament will be a success. Just watch out.