FIFA VP Jim Boyce told Brazil "to make alternative plans to ferry fans to Sao Paulo’s World Cup games as police tried to break a metro strike with teargas less than a week before the tournament opens," according to James Hider of the LONDON TIMES. Riot police "used teargas to disperse a picket line at a Sao Paulo metro station," while reports emerged that Brazil President Dilma Rousseff "had agreed a last-minute deal with thousands of homeless protesters who had planned a rally outside last night’s Brazil-Serbia friendly in the city." Boyce, one of the few senior footballing officials to break the FIFA's mantra of "it’ll be all right on the night," admitted that "protests and the paralysis of the city by metro workers could be a serious challenge for next Thursday’s opening match of Brazil versus Croatia." Boyce said, "The biggest concern is indeed what will happen with the protests. Fans must have assurances they can get to the stadium." Metro workers "denied trying to shake down the government before the World Cup after a rash of public sector strikes, from police to teachers, marked the run-up to the tournament." They said that "they had been asking for the past two months for better pay and conditions but had received no response from the Sao Paulo state government." The government "caved in this week to striking police who oversee airports and borders, granting them an almost 16 per cent pay rise to avoid industrial action as hundreds of thousands of fans, football officials and at least 20 heads of state fly in" (LONDON TIMES, 6/7).
TICKET TIME: FIFA has received more than 11 million ticket requests for about 3.1 million available tickets. To date, a total of 2,961,911 tickets have been sold, including more than 2.2 million directly via FIFA.com to the general public. Overall, 60% of the tickets were bought by Brazilians and 40% by fans from the rest of the world. After hosts Brazil (1,363,179), the U.S. has sold the most tickets at 196,838, followed by Argentina (61,021), Germany (58,778), England (57,917), Colombia (54,477), Australia (52,289), Chile (38,638), France (34,865) and Mexico (33,694). There are tickets left for just 27 of the 64 matches (FIFA). BLOOMBERG's Tariq Panja wrote FIFA Head of Marketing Thierry Weil said that sponsors of the World Cup "failed to take up as many as 100,000 tickets reserved for them." FIFA "has changed the way it issues tickets to its commercial partners, asking them to confirm demand five months before the start of the tournament and reconfirm demand ahead of individual matches." Weil said, "We reserved some tickets for them in January 2014. They buy what they need and the rest that we received is injected back into general sale. It was about 100,000." Further sponsor tickets "could re-enter the market in days before matches" (BLOOMBERG, 6/8).
NO PLACE TO SIT: The AP reported FIFA said that "about 1,400 people will have to change their tickets less than a week before the World Cup begins because they were handed out before work at the stadiums was completed." FIFA "notified 1,376 people whose tickets will have to be swapped because they do not correspond to valid seats." Football's governing body said that "seating configurations changed after technical teams established exactly where the media tribunes and broadcast equipment had to be placed in each of the 12 venues" (AP, 6/8). REUTERS reported a FIFA media spokesperson said that "officials had contacted ticketholders in advance to prevent confusion or delays on match days." The spokesperson said, "The very nature of proactively contacting the customers about problems with seats should illustrate the extra effort that FIFA is undertaking in order to ensure that the seats exist on match day at the stadia or that alternative seats will be provided" (REUTERS, 6/7). In a separate article, Panja wrote buyers who have yet to collect their tickets wil not "be affected." Fans "who fail to exchange their tickets will be assisted to their new seats." Organizers "experienced the same problems at some of the venues at the Confederations Cup" (BLOOMBERG, 6/7).
CLEARED FOR TAKEOFF: The BBC reported Cameroon's players "are finally on their way to the World Cup after initially refusing to board a flight to Brazil because of a dispute over bonuses." The squad, including former Chelsea striker Samuel Eto'o, "refused to fly to South America." But they eventually agreed to a financial package "with the nation's football federation after an emergency meeting" (BBC, 6/8).
