|
World Cup Organizers Renting Crowds TO Fill Empty Stadiums
|
|
On
Thursday 1,900 volunteers were given free passes to watch the
Senegal-Denmark match in Daegu
|
SEOUL,
June 8 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - South Korean World Cup
organizers are using "rent a crowd" policy to fill up empty
seats admitted officials in Seoul on Saturday, news agencies reported.
Thousands
of local government officials and school children have already been
called up in an emergency plan to prevent television pictures of empty
seats being broadcast around the world, reported Agence France-Presse
(AFP).
On
Thursday 1,900 volunteers were given free passes to watch the
Senegal-Denmark match in Daegu.
"That
has been done," admitted Chun Young-Il, spokesman for the Korean
World Cup organizing committee (KOWOC). "Some were done on a
voluntary basis."
Since
the start of the World Cup both Korean and Japanese organizers have
angrily complained about ticket distribution and both have threatened
legal action against FIFA and it's ticket agency Byrom.
But
on Saturday FIFA president Sepp Blatter made his first public
statement on the scandal and insisted that things were under control.
He
stressed that FIFA was also unhappy over the problems but added;
"now all parties involved have worked hard to solve the problem
we can say that the situation is under control at the present time. We
now look positively forward to the rest of the World Cup."
FIFA
is in the middle of carrying out an investigation why seats that had
been sold remained empty.
Fans
have complained of paying for tickets but not receiving them. There
has also been reports of fans turning up for matches to find several
people have the same seat number.
Japanese
organizers are selling tickets for the remaining first-round matches
by telephone because of problems there.
For
the remaining first round games, including Japan-Russia and
Cameroon-Germany, JAWOC will sell 50 percent of unsold tickets by
phone, a JAWOC spokesman said.
FIFA
had previously authorized ticket sales only through the Internet. Now
only 50 percent of unsold tickets will be available online, JAWOC
said.
But
even the phone 'solution' has run into problems.
Japan
's phone networks had to be partially shut down Friday under the
pressure of millions of calls from football fans seeking World Cup
tickets for three games including the Japan-Russia match this weekend.
"There
were two million calls in three minutes, jamming the lines," said
FIFA spokesman Keith Cooper.
On
June 2, JAWOK blamed FIFA for thousands of empty seats for early
matches in
Japan
, while fans fumed at the internet ticketing system.
Some
19,000 seats in total were vacant at the Ireland-Cameroon and
Germany-Saudi Arabia matches on the first day of World Cup action in
Japan
, the Yomiuri Shimbun and Jiji Press news agency reported.
“We
were told that the unsold overseas tickets would be sent to us for
sale in
Japan
, so we regret that they were not,” JAWOC spokeswoman Yukiko Koike
said.
When
asked if the unsold tickets caused the great gaps in attendance, Koike
said: “It is a possibility.”
Even
World Cup favorite
Argentina
and David Beckham-led
England
did not play to packed houses Sunday.
While
FIFA has attempted to respond to the shortfall with ticket sales
through their Internet site, enraged fans said the system was
permanently jammed.
“I
think it's a complete shambles,” said Neil Rowe, a 27-year-old pilot
from
England
, outside the stadium in Saitama, some 50 kilometers northwest of
Tokyo
.
He
had finally managed to get tickets for Sunday's England-Sweden match.
“We
spent three days trying to get through (to the FIFA website) and it
kept on crashing,” Rowe said.
The
fiasco follows the late printing of a batch of tickets by
British-based company Byrom that left some overseas fans without
tickets.
FIFA
spokesman Andreas Herren said all late ticket deliveries had been
rectified smoothly and that unsold tickets have come mainly from
returns from overseas football associations and sponsors who did not
use them.
He
said that those tickets have been put up for resale on FIFA's website,
which has so far sold 15,000 for
Japan
venues.
|
