FIFA Says 2.95 Million World Cup Tickets Sold

Almost three million World Cup tickets have been sold, FIFA said Sunday, as the governing body’s president disclosed that the tournament had helped push revenues over the past four years to a record of $7.5 billion.

A FIFA spokesman said that 2.95 million tickets had been sold up to Sunday’s opening day.

The beginning of the World Cup has led to a surge of interest in the 64 matches over 29 days regardless of negative publicity over Qatar’s hosting.

Queues have built up outside the FIFA ticket centre in Doha and fans report delay to get onto the official online ticket platform.

Qatar has already overtaken Russia 2018, when just over 2.4 million tickets were sold.

The spokesman said Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Mexico, Britain, United Arab Emirates, Argentina, France, India and Brazil were the top markets.

FIFA president Gianni Infantino told a conference earlier that the world body’s four-year revenues were estimated to hit $7.5 billion by the end of the year.

Revenues are more than $1 billion higher than predicted four years ago.

Infantino is set to be re-elected unopposed at a congress in March after no rivals came forward in time to force an election.

According to him, new rules regulating football agents would be announced this year.

Infantino also said he wanted to see more games between national teams from different regions and a bigger Club World Cup. “We have some good ideas,” he said.