Pensioner dies while queueing for World Cup tickets

| Friday April 16, 2010 00:00

The Cape Town queue, like others around the country, began to build up yesterday afternoon. Around 120,000 of the tickets are available to South Africans for as little as £13, the lowest price at a World Cup for many years.

Ticket sales in South Africa had been below expectations until recently and Fifa has been criticised for selling them in a complex system over the internet which was alien to poor black football fans from the host nation, who are accustomed to getting tickets for cash on match days.

Officials acknowledged mistakes had been made and launched a new system of sales through ticketing offices and supermarkets yesterday, hoping to sell out the tournament after disappointing sales.

'I'm going to kiss my ticket when I get it,' said one man called Godfrey at the Maponya Mall in South Africa's biggest black township, Soweto. He did not want to give his name because he was skipping work to stand in line.

'The last time I waited in a line like this was when I voted for Mandela,' he said, recalling the elections won by Nelson Mandela at the end of apartheid in 1994.

Fifa had previously said the final was sold out, but yesterday announced 300 late tickets would be released for the biggest match in world football.

Tickets are still well above normal prices for top-level football in South Africa. Even the cheap tickets are more than five times the cost of normal top class games and costs escalate drastically in higher categories for better seats and after the first-round group phase. Tickets for premier seats at the final cost up to £600.

Demand in South Africa had initially been sluggish but the most recent phase saw locals snap up 85% of the 240,000 tickets sold between February and the beginning of this month. Fifa said last week that 2.2m tickets had been sold for the tournament, which kicks off on 11 June.  (Guardian)