This summer Ukraine and Poland are hosting Euro-2012. Vladimir Karpovich, the Head of the Commerce Department of the Russian Football Union, talked about the details of getting tickets for Euro-2012 by Russian fans.
The ticket program of UEFA for Euro-2012 was started in March 2011, when any fan could send an application for tickets. UEFA reserved them. The system was depersonalized. A person ordered tickets for Kiev, Warsaw, Donetsk or Gdansk without information which teams in which groups would play there. On December 2nd the draw took place, and on December 12th the ticket program of UEFA began. It was connected with groups and associations. Initially the deadline of sending requests was February 29th, but later UEFA prolonged acceptance of requests up to March 2nd. Thus, all the fans who wanted to send requests to UEFA. UEFA accepted these requests. On March 2nd acceptance of requests was finished, and each federation got notification that requests are not accepted anymore, and then we had to conduct a drawing procedure among those who sent requests.
Speaking about number of tickets allocated for Russia, Karpovich said: “We have discussed a number of tickets or packages, as one person could order tickets for three matches with UEFA for a long time. At some moment we stopped at 6 thousand. According to our experience, the European experience, these 6,000 packages were divided among three categories of football fans: 2,000 were given to organized fan-associations, i.e. those who always attend stadiums, matches of our national team and supporters clubs. 2,000 were given to the general public, i.e. those who do not belong to these associations. And 2,000 of the packages were given to the football family, i.e. clubs, the Russian Premier League, the National Football League, clubs of the second division, numerous interregional unities of the RFU, committees of the RFU, unions and so on, everyone who is involved in the activity of the Russian Football Union.
As for ticket payments, Karpovich stated that “starting on March 15th, UEFA began sending e-mails to winners. By March 20th they were to withdraw the money from the credit cards of the winners. If they failed to do so the first time, they would provide fans with information again, and it would continue until March 30th. If they couldn’t get money from the winners by March 30th, the request would be withdrawn, and the tickets would go to another person at the discretion of UEFA. There is another form of payment, which is by bank transfer. In this case, time limits are wider. UEFA sends notifying letters to winners from March 15th, then they describe the process of paying by bank transfer and receive it by April 5th, 2012. Tickets and paper forms would be printed by UEFA on May 2nd. The initial period for sending tickets to winners is May 7th. So I think our fans will get their tickets on May 15-16. As far as I remember, 27,800 requests were sent in altogether. If we exclude requests for the quarter-finals, semi-finals and final, as UEFA permitted, and divided this number into three, as a person could order three tickets at once, we receive 8,000 package requests. It means that 50% of all those who sent requests to UEFA would get their tickets.”
As for the idea of paying by SMS, Karpovich explained: “We wanted to control requests sent to UEFA at our level, i.e. we tried to launch a security control, as we have certain information about some people who could reserve tickets. But later, considering the number of SMSs, we understood that the idea wasn’t successful or interesting. We didn’t refuse it, as receiving messages are a potential base of our fans, which we would use for informing fans about the RFU events, if they permit us, of course. There are some fans… I don’t know how to say… Speaking in slang they were spotted. There are some fans who belong to a certain group, according to the Ministry of Internal Affairs and our security service. And we wanted to prevent them from receiving tickets. Unfortunately, our idea failed, but as I have said we gain advantages from the story in creation of this fan base.”
Answering the question about visa aspects, Karpovich said: “The quarter-final we would play in Poland anyway. We would have a rival from the group in which Germany and the Netherlands would play off. However, this question is being discussed. The only difficulty is returning to Poland, as our fans would have no problems with entering Ukraine. The return is possible only if our team would play in the final. But we discuss it with the Polish embassy.”
