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| | Our detractors will say that commercial necessity makes our demands unrealistic. We don't agree. The present system lead to fortunes going out of the game in black-market profits at France 98, and will do so again at Germany 2006 if nothing is changed.
The simple solution is a free-market price for tickets, but with preferential allocation for fans of participating teams providing they can pay the going rate. In most cases, fans will have to travel vast distances and pay for accommodation for several weeks, so ticket prices are not usually the biggest consideration.
Part of the reason for this site is to gather ideas from fans around the world - that means you!. Our collective minds can surely come up with a better system than the one we have.
The authors of this site are not championing any system in particular, and if someone has a better idea than ours we'll get behind it. We do have some ideas of our own though:
Our vision is of a single organisation that deals with ticket allocations for all World Cups, taking the responsibility away from the host nation, and learning from its experience as it goes along so that each time there's a World Cup the process gets better. Anyone who wanted World Cup tickets would have to register and obtain an identity card similar to a passport - or perhaps passports would do instead, to save this expense. There would be an official secondary market, run over the internet and through agents, so you could re-sell a ticket if you couldn't use it. But you wouldn't be able to profit from the re-sale, only obtain a refund. Black markets would, and must, be stamped out completely.
Ticket prices could be fixed by the hosts under advice from the sales organisation, but adjusted if not sold out. Tickets, including corporate allocations, could be sold for the knock-out stages conditional on "your" team making the game. Surely everyone would prefer that? If there are 4 teams that could be in a given game, sell the tickets well in advance conditional on your team playing, giving refunds to those who's teams aren't involved.
The sales organisation could also act as a travel and accommodation booking agency, linking accommodation to tickets. As things stand, there will be a scramble for accommodation when knock-out games become known. Teams who make an early exit may have thousands of fans trying to cancel hotels, others will be trying to book them. This chaos helps no-one. If a ticket came complete with an optional hotel room, everything could be sorted out at the same time and venues and fans would be much happier.
Tell us what you think.
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