Predictably, the black market for World Cup tickets is booming. Equally predictable is FIFA's lax attitude about the reselling of tickets, which is illegal, officially. Tickets to World Cup matches
sold in advance for between 45 and 100 euros; outside the stadiums they're selling for between 200 and 500 euros. Tickets to the final are already running as high as 5,900 euros. Tickets to this
year's World Cup have actually been personalized, so if it wanted to, FIFA could, in the words of one official, "stem the black marketing pretty well." But it simply isn't possible, given that some
60,000-80,000 fans descend on the stadiums a half hour before the matches begin. Per game, FIFA screens between 500 and 1000 spectators to ensure they are the original purchasers of the ticket in
their possession. "We can only warn from buying tickets on the black market," the FIFA official said. The possibility of being out a lot of cash and admittance to the stadium doesn't seem to be
deterring millions of ticketless fans. Meanwhile, FIFA executive Ismail Bhamjee, the former head of the Botswana Football Association, was actually caught selling 12 tickets to the England-Trinidad &
Tobago match. Apparently, Bhamjee also marked up the price from 100 to 300 euros each. "It is deeply embarrassing when a high ranking official is involved in something like this," Markus Siegler,
FIFA's director of communications, told the press. "It puts FIFA in a very bad light. On the other hand, FIFA proved that we take these things very seriously and acted very quickly." Bhamjee was sent
home and could forced to resign from his post following the scandal.
Read the whole story at Deutsche Welle »
