New round of World Cup tickets to go on sale

The next round of 2010 World Cup ticket sales begins Saturday, with football’s governing body FIFA predicting a “global rush” for seats after the Final Draw this week.

“It’s traditionally by far the most important sales phase, as the world’s football fans will by then know who will be playing whom in the group matches,” top ticketing official Horst Schmidt said in a statement on Tuesday.

About one million tickets for all 64 matches will be available from Saturday on the FIFA website, including a limited number for the opening match and the final, he said.

So far about 674,000 have been sold, about half of them to South Africans. Among overseas fans, the United States has snapped up the most tickets, followed by Britain and Germany, according to FIFA.