Slow sales don't worry organisers
World Cup organisers are not too worried, and don't expect the visa problems being experienced by some fans to have a major effect on ticket sales
| Loading ... Chris Dehring, CEO of the World Cup Organising Committee |
The problems some nationalities were having obtaining visas were believed to be playing a major part. There were teething problems in Australia, and New Zealanders expressed dismay. Now, the Pakistanis have found out they have to send their passports to New Delhi, India.
Negotiations are under way between the Pakistan Cricket Board (PCB) and the Pakistani Foreign Office to get the visas issued in Pakistan instead. Ahsan Malik, a spokesman for the PCB, said there was a precedent where special visa arrangements were made for fans in the past.
Citizens from Britain, Canada, Ireland and South Africa are exempt from the visa requirement but supporters from major cricketing countries like India, Pakistan, Australia, New Zealand and Sri Lanka are not.
Delroy Taylor, senior project officer for ticketing, said he didn't believe the visa situation would stop fans from making it to the region. When the second phase of ticketing ended in November, only half the 800,000 seats had been sold. The nine local organising committees expect to rake in US$40 million from ticket revenue.
Taylor added that it was strongly believed the majority of tickets would be snapped up by Caribbean fans when the final phase of ticketing started on February 1. "I wouldn't say the visa situation could be aligned to the ticket sales," Taylor said while at the airport yesterday. "The ticket sales opened a long time ago [May 1, 2006] and the visa system just came about a few weeks ago.
"The ticket sales are slower than hoped. The ideal is that we would have loved to have sold all by this time. But we are expecting the people of the Caribbean to come on board and buy most of the tickets in the final phase. This is the phase which most people in the West Indies can relate to - first come first served. The international market has snapped up a lot of the tickets in the early stages."
Chris Dehring, the chief executive of the World Cup Organising Committee, was more upbeat. "This event has faced so many challenges that at this stage, everything is full steam ahead," he told The Miami Herald newspaper. "The little hiccups are simply rolled out."
Today marks 44 days to go before the official start of the event and Taylor remained optimistic. He noted that the stadia were being completed and there had been a definite up-swing in spectator interest.
"We were expecting this would happen," Taylor said, "there is a feel-good factor happening around the Caribbean. A year ago there was scepticism, but now the stadia are being painted and they are right in front of us for the people to see."
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