World Cup tickets selling out fast: FIFA

Individual tickets for the opening match, semi-finals and final of the 2010 World Cup have sold out, according to world football’s governing body FIFA.

A total of 105,322 tickets in the second phase of World Cup ticket sales have been confirmed and approved, FIFA said in a statement.

Team specific ticket series for England, Brazil, Argentina, Australia, Ireland and Netherlands are also not available.

Individual match tickets for games taking place in Cape Town, Nelspruit and Pretoria were also sold out, FIFA added.

However team specific series tickets for the semi-finals and the final are still available.

This means that fans would be able to follow their team but if their favourite is eliminated in the early stages of the tournament they would still be able to attend the final match.

Ten venues will host the 2010 tournament which will be staged on African soil for the first time.

FIFA said an additional 72,000 World Cup ticket requests were currently being processed, and if any confirmed ticket had not been paid by the applicant, it would be made available to the public again.

A total of more than 400,000 tickets, or 68 percent of those available, have been sold for next month’s Confederations Cup, the curtain-raiser for the World Cup.