Roughly 10,000 stood in line near the Moscow Luzhniki stadium in an effort to buy tickets for Russia-Britain’s football match slated for October 17, 2007.
Photo: RIA NOVOSTI
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Tickets for Russia-Britain’s Football Standoff Sold In No Time
Roughly 10,000 stood in line near the Moscow Luzhniki stadium yesterday in an effort to buy tickets for Russia-Britain’s football match slated for October 17, 2007. There were 570,000 applications for 74,000 seats, and 6,800 tickets offered for free sale were bought up during a few hours.
On Monday, Luzhniki was selling tickets for the football match of Russia and Britain. About 10,000 fans formed a queue of a few kilometers, some of them had spent a night near the stadium to be the first by opening of ticket offices.
”I don’t remember such agiotage demand for tickets in the recent years,” said Andrey Malosolov, the briefer of Russian Football Union (RFU). There are two basic reasons of it, representatives of RFU explained, the match will show whether Russia’s squad will still have the chance to advance to Europe’s championship and the mere arrival of Britain’s team in Moscow lures the fans at large.
”Evidently, each seventh fan won’t be able to reach the stadium and be offended,” Malosolov said, pointing out that, in addition to tickets sold via the ticket offices, roughly 30,000 had been bought under advance booking, including via the Internet, and another 22,000 were distributed through football clubs, 4,500 were given to Britain’s fans, while the remainder went to VIP-boxes for president’s administration, goverment and government bodies. RFU had 570,000 applications by past Wednesday, Malosolov went out, adding that Luzhniki has just 74,000 seats, where the tickets could be sold, as the police banned them from selling tickets for the first through fifth rows for safety reasons.
Yesterday, ticket offices sold around 6,800 tickets during five hours and closed by 4:00 p.m. The price started from 300 rubles, but the profiteers wanted no less than 2,000 for the same seats.
www.kommersant.com
All the Article in Russian as of Oct. 09, 2007
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