Tickets to see the Republic of Ireland's games at next summer's European Championships in France were among the most sought after in the latest round of sales by Uefa, applications for which closed at 11am on Monday.
Ireland’s opening game, against Sweden at the Stade de France on June 13th, attracted the second-highest number of applications in the whole group stage, behind Germany against Poland at the same venue and ahead of Portugal versus Austria at the Parc des Princes.
Martin O’Neill’s side was fourth overall in terms of applications made for team-specific tickets applied for during the last month.
Demand outstrips supply
As expected, demand hugely outstripped supply, with 3.5 million applications received for the 800,000 tickets that were made available this time around. Ireland, with a population of 4.6 million, came in behind Poland (population 38.5 million), host nation France (66.5 million), Austria (8.6 million) and ahead of Switzerland (8.3 million) in terms of applicant numbers. Neither Uefa nor the
FAI
would provide detailed breakdowns of the numbers.
Uefa, which has warned those who have applied for tickets to ensure that they have sufficient funds on the card they have used to complete the process during the weeks ahead, say they will have informed all successful applicants by Monday, February 29th.
The FAI says that it will receive all of the relevant data by next Monday, at which point it will begin the process of how to allocate tickets on the basis of the criteria it has set out with regard to rewarding regular fans and various other members of the “football family”.
The system has attracted some criticism from those who feel that it allocates too few tickets to supporters with an established track record of going to see the team, especially away from home, and there is likely to be renewed controversy when the distribution is completed next month.
The association would only confirm on Monday that its allocation had been “hugely oversubscribed” but an official expressed the hope that, particularly for the first game, significant numbers of additional tickets will become available, either through it or directly to supporters through other sources.
Although yesterday’s deadline marks the end of the most obvious way to land seats among the main contingent of Irish fans, supporters still have until February 1st to apply for tickets in other areas of the ground – many of them with restricted views – through the main tournament ticket portal and uefa.com.
Returned tickets will also become available closer to the tournament through a resale page on the same website.
Friendlies
Meanwhile, Belgium have confirmed their schedule ahead of the tournament, with the team ranked world number one set for friendlies against Portugal in Brussels on March 29th, Switzerland in Geneva on May 28th and then Finland and Norway at home in Brussels on June 1st and 5th respectively.
Marc Wilmots and his squad will then depart for France on June 7th, one day earlier than their Irish counterparts.
