Over half a million World Cup ticket requests in third sales phase

Zurich - The first 10 days of the third ticketing sales phase for the 2010 World Cup has seen the number of tickets applied for hit the 500,000 mark, FIFA revealed Monday. According to football's ruling body, 386,300 of those tickets were requested by South African residents (77 per cent of the total applications), while 114,237 tickets applied for came from the rest of the world.

In comparison with the previous editions of the FIFA World Cups, the latest ticket applications figures are impressive," Horst Schmidt, chairman of the FIFA ticketing sub-committee, said in a statement.

The United States heads the list of foreign countries for this phase with 22,942 tickets, followed by the United Kingdom (20,232), Mexico (7,981), Germany (7,697) , Australia (6,277) and Brazil (4,760).

The current sales phase, where around 1 million tickets are available, runs until January 22, 2010.