Soccer authorities in South Korea, which is cohosting the 2002 World Cup with Japan, have proposed to soccer world governing body FIFA that it allow tickets allocated to South Koreans to be sold to Japanese and Chinese fans as well. This is in response to sluggish sales of tickets in South Korea sources said Wednesday.
Residents in the two host countries were allocated 50 percent of the three million tickets for the tournament, with the remainder set aside for fans from the other participating countries. But while tickets remain unsold in South Korea, they were snapped up in Japan.
Japan's organizers for the World Cup, JAWOC, received more than 15 million valid ticket applications for the first stage of domestic ticket sales -- over 70 times the number of seats available.
Japanese fans now can only get tickets if any are left over from the allocation for other participating nations or through sweepstakes by World Cup sponsors.
In South Korea, however, half of the 500,000 tickets allocated remained unsold as of November because of high prices, with the cheapest ticket costing about 7,000 yen.
South Korea's World Cup organizing body, KOWOC, submitted its request for sales of domestic tickets to Japanese and Chinese fans to FIFA's ticketing committee in early December, the sources said.
FIFA told KOWOC it would consider the proposal after seeing the results of sales through the end of January.
Sales in South Korea have picked up recently but one-third of the ticket allocation remained unsold as of Dec. 20.