A shortage of tickets rather than high prices will hamper South Africans who want to see any of the 2010 Soccer World Cup matches,chief executive of the Local Organising Committee (LOC), Danny Jordaan said on Tuesday.

"There will be more than 3-million tickets in total, but this is the World Cup and so we would be lucky if we have one million of those available for South Africans," Jordaan said at a conference in Johannesburg on the readiness of the accommodation industry for the tournament.

The tickets for the 64 matches that will take place in South Africa during 2010 will likely go on sale in 2009. In the meantime the first step for teams to qualify to play in the World Cup will be taken when the preliminary draw takes place in Durban in November. Jordaan said 202 countries were expected to take part in the draw.

South Africa as host country qualifies automatically, as does Italy who won the Cup in Germany in 2006. "It would be the first opportunity to show what we are going to deliver in 2010," Jordaan said.

In the meantime, Jordaan said, the LOC had to answer very difficult questions because the World Cup had become the benchmark against which everything in South Africa was measured. The reason was that 2010 was not just 90 minutes of football, but part of the transformation of the country, Jordaan said. "When there are water shortages in Polokwane I must answer what is going to happen to 2010. When there are power outages (in the Western Cape) I must answer what is going to happen to 2010. Now there are questions about what is going to happen to (Zimbabwean President Robert) Mugabe and I must answer what is going to happen to 2010," said Jordaan.

Although it was not always easy, he was glad to answer the questions. "Post-2010 South Africa must be significantly better than pre-2010 South Africa," Jordaan said.

One question he was no longer prepared to answer was whether or not the country would be hosting the tournament. Highlighting the fact that the 2010 World Cup had already generated more than US3.5 billion, Jordaan said the South African event had already become the highest revenue earner in World Cup history.

He said the soil turning ceremony for the construction of the last of five new stadiums would take place in Polokwane on Friday. "We have thus delivered on our promise to the world to start construction in the first half of this year."

In the meantime Adam Brown, senior executive of Match - the Fifa appointed agency for ticketing and accommodation - said the agency would start looking for 30,000 additional rooms in the next few weeks. The agency already had 25,000 of the 55,000 rooms needed to accommodate officials, the media and fans. "We will be able to deliver 55,000 rooms for 2010," Brown said.

Source: Sapa


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