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What a joke!! Giving tickets away for free when so many others can't get their hands on them. Typical FIFA old-boys-network bureaucracy.
Hope they sort this out and find out whoever stuffed this one up...
South Korean World Cup organisers are using "rent a crowd" policy to fill up empty seats admitted officials in Seoul on Saturday.
Thousands of local government officials and school children have already been called up in an emergency plan to prevent television pictures of empty seats being broadcast around the world.
On Thursday 1,900 volunteers were given free passes to watch the Senegal-Denmark match in Daegu.
"That has been done," admitted Chun Young-Il, spokesman for the Korean World Cup organising committee (KOWOC). "Some were done on a voluntary basis."
Since the start of the World Cup both Korean and Japanese organisers have angrily complained about ticket distribution and both have threatened legal action against FIFA and it's ticket agency Byrom.
But on Saturday FIFA president Sepp Blatter made his first public statement on the scandal and insisted that things were under control.
He stressed that FIFA were also unhappy over the problems but added; "now all parties involved have worked hard to solve the problem we can say that the situation is under control at the present time. We now look positively forward to the rest of the World Cup."
FIFA is in the middle of carrying out an investigation why seats that had been sold remained empty.
Fans have complained of paying for tickets but not receiving them. There has also been reports of fans turning up for matches to find several people have the same seat number.
Japanese organisers are selling tickets for the remaining first-round matches by telephone because of problems there.
For the remaining first round games, including Japan-Russia and Cameroon-Germany, JAWOC will sell 50 per cent of unsold tickets by phone, a JAWOC spokesman said.
FIFA had previously authorised ticket sales only through the Internet. Now only 50 per cent of unsold tickets will be available online, JAWOC said.
But even the phone 'solution' has run into problems.
Japan's phone networks had to be partially shut down Friday under the pressure of millions of calls from football fans seeking World Cup tickets for three games including the Japan-Russia match this weekend.
"There were two million calls in three minutes, jamming the lines," said FIFA spokesman Keith Cooper.
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