Ticket Strategy Update

The second round FIFA sale has come and gone. I had little hope of getting any tickets from it, and today I got cofirmation from FIFA that I had not.

At this point I am thinking the best strategy will be to try to get tickets through US Soccer, and then use the remaining two FIFA sales phases as backup plans. As a last resort, we can always try to buy tickets from scalpers at the stadiums.

The US Soccer official supporters club, US Soccer SC, will be the best next option for US fans. For $50, members will get various perks including priority access to World cup tickets. In effect, the SC seems like a way for US Soccer to add a $50 premium to ticket sales. But these tickets will be in a block allocated for US fans. In past World Cups the sections allocated for these blocks have been behind the goals and the pro-US environment has been the best there. It is, in my opinion, worth the $50 to get tickets here.

We should expect to hear more about these ticket sales leading up to the final group draw on December 4. The third FIFA sale runs from 5 December to 22 January and it is a lottery like the first round was, so there is no need to apply early. We can only hope that US Soccer will publicize ordering details and notify recipients before 22 January so any who did not get tickets can apply for the FIFA sale.

There has been very little publicity about security measures being taken to prevent scalping. The Germany 2006 organizing committee made a big deal of it and claimed that only the person who originally purchased the tickets could use them to get into a match. People still found ways around it. It is a topic we'll be watching closely as our options for obtaining tickets continue to dwindle.