Open Letter to FIFA Ticket Department Office

Dear Mr FIFA Ticket Department Officer,

My name is Carlos Martins and I am a Portuguese football lover. A few months ago, me and a friend (Francisco Dias) decided we wanted to watch a World Cup match, namely any Portugal game, in Germany, Summer 2006.

We applied for tickets, as everybody else did. The draw came up, and we had got no ticket drawn. This came as a surprise; however, we accepted our fate and waited for the next ticket selling stage, the current stage. Also surprisingly, very few tickets are available, and most of them appear to be to the so called “obstructed view” seats. So we wait. We wait to have to luck of after refreshing the website 60 times per minute, at some point a ticket (in this case, two) might became available for a match involving the Portuguese team. No luck so far.

We are obviously getting desperate. Obviously, we believe in FIFA and its honesty. We believe in Football. Furthermore, we love football. We believe that FIFA’s policies in order to stop illegal ticket selling have been carried out successfully. We believe that all the security measures surrounding a ticket purchase would result in fair ticket distribution, allowing those who love football to watch the games, paying the fair price, and not providing illegal fees and profits to illegal sellers. Hence, it seems that all the matches are sold out, according to the official ticket website.

However, because we love football and because we strongly desire to be in Germany supporting our team, our national team, we have been trying to desperately understand why there are not tickets available.

The answer is quite easy. More, is quick, it is accessible to everyone. As easy as typing “world cup tickets” in a web search engine, like Google, and at least 4 different illegal ticket selling websites are available. With prices according to the demand-supply market conditions, of course, and therefore, with a rather massive amount of profit included.

Here are the websites, in order to clear any possible doubt:

http://worldcupfootballtickets2006.com
http://www.germany2006tickets.com
http://www.euroteam.info
http://www.ticketcity.com/worldcuptickets.asp

Of course, there are many others available, including bidding websites, like Ebay.

Given all this, we would like to know why does FIFA allow these situations to happen. Moreover, why the strict security measures regarding ticket purchases are imposed, if they simply do not seem to work? Why must we pay a fee to an illegal ticket seller in order to make our dream of watching a Portugal World Cup match come true? Why does FIFA continue to be complacent with this situation?

But most important of all: why do two football fans are not allowed to watch their dream World Cup match, due to so many illegal ticket selling which are not prevented by the supposedly world football supervisor?

This e-mail is going to be sent to contact@fifa.org address but also to the press. This situation must become public. It is extremely shameful for FIFA and for football!

Best regards,

Carlos Martins
Francisco Dias