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Tickets for most games sold out

Published:Wednesday | April 16, 2014 | 12:00 AM
United States Vice-president Joe Biden (left) and Secretary of State John Kerry unveil the FIFA World Cup trophy, the actual trophy that will be awarded to the winner of this year's World Cup during a ceremony at the State Department in Washington on Monday. - AP

SAO PAULO (AP):

Tickets for nearly two-thirds of the World Cup matches were sold out within hours of FIFA opening the final online sales phase yesterday.

Five hours after sales opened on FIFA's website, there were tickets available to only 20 of the 64 matches. Only 15 matches still had tickets available 10 hours into the sales phase.

FIFA said 126,837 tickets were requested within the first four hours. Football's governing body had put nearly 200,000 tickets on sale on a first-come, first-serve basis in this last phase.

"With less than two months to go, this is the last chance for fans to secure their tickets for football's flagship event," FIFA marketing director, Thierry Weil, said.

Ten high-demand matches were not available from the beginning, including the Brazil-Croatia opener on June 12 and the final at the Maracana on July 13. The other eight matches were: Mexico-Cameroon, England-Italy, Argen-tina-Bosnia, Brazil-Mexico, Spain-Chile, Cameroon-Brazil, Croatia-Mexico, and Australia-Spain.

FIFA said Brazilian citizens got 63 percent of the tickets (80,496) yesterday, followed by fans from the United States, Colombia, Argentina, Germany, Mexico, France, England, Chile and Australia.