Johannesburg - The second round of ticket sales for the 2010 FIFA World Cup has started, with approximately 100 000 tickets available on a first-come, first-served basis.
As of noon (Central European Time) on 4 May 2009, ticket applications can be made via www.fifa.com or at any First National Bank (FNB) branch in South Africa.
South Africans who apply at FNB branches must present a valid form of identification, while foreigners who apply at FNB branches must show their passports, reports SouthAfrica.info.
Those who apply on behalf of friends or family must provide their names, nationalities, dates of birth and identity numbers.
Each applicant can apply for up to four tickets per match and up to seven matches in total. Ticket prices start at US$20 (R140).
Applicants will be informed of the outcome of their application within 10 working days, and tickets will be available for collection from FIFA's venue ticketing centres from April 2010 onwards.
For more information the public can go to www.fifa.com.
The second round of ticket sales runs until 16 November 2009 - or until tickets made available for the second round run out.
Two more sales phases - a random selection followed again by a first-come, first-served phase - will follow the World Cup Final Draw, in which the 32 participating teams will be drawn into eight groups for the tournament.
The first of these will run from 5 December 2009 to 22 January 2010, and the second from 9 February to 7 April 2010.
Finally, if there are still any tickets left over, these will be sold in a "last minute" round of sales running from 15 April to 11 July 2010.
In the first round of ticket sales, over 1.8-million ticket applications from 205 countries were received. Of these, a total of 555 871 tickets were successfully drawn.
South Africans accounted for 245 948 or 44 percent of these ticket sales, followed by the United States (69 208 tickets), United Kingdom (39 421 tickets) and Germany (29 330 tickets).
From the applications received, the most popular team was England, with 228 822 team-specific tickets requested and 8 895 successfully awarded.
Not surprisingly, the World Cup final was the most heavily oversubscribed match, by a factor of 3 000 percent.
