Wish you were here? Fifa say there are plenty of unsold tickets for South Africa

Fifa are yet to completely sell out any of the 64 World Cup games – including the final – but will put a further 90,000 tickets on sale today.

The new allocation will be added to around 75,000 ‘category one’ tickets which are still unsold, taking the total number of available tickets to 160,500.

In all, there are 2.9 million tickets for the entire tournament, meaning that stadiums will, on average, be at least 96 per cent full.

Fifa believe they can still take that figure up to around 98 per cent, a ratio which would be comparable with past World Cups, including the hugely popular and fan friendly 2006 tournament in Germany.

The 90,000 new tickets will go on sale at a variety of price levels on Fifa’s website from 8am this morning.

In total, there are 1,694 seats remaining for England's first match against USA, 2,654 for the game against Algeria in Cape Town, 3,652 for their final group fixture against Slovenia in Port Elizabeth and 861 for the final.

Fifa’s main difficulty appears to be finding buyers for the most expensive tickets. The ‘category one’ prices range from $160 (£110) to $900 (£623) and so are clearly unaffordable for a vast number of local people in South Africa.

Even so, South Africans have still bought over one million World Cup tickets, taking advantage of some special host prices which started at $20 (£14) a ticket. The United States accounts for the second biggest number of ticket sales, with England taking the third largest contingent to South Africa.

“The number of people coming to the World Cup from England shows that they are big fans – maybe the number one country of football, in Europe at least,” said Fifa secretary general Jerome Valcke.

Tourism predictions by Fifa indicate around 380,000 foreign fans, of which 20,000 are expected to be English. That is clearly well down on the 150,000 that travelled to Germany to support England in 2006, but likely to be almost identical to the 20,000 in Japan and South Korea in 2002.

In all, the Football Association have sold 24,000 tickets to England fans, with only what is being described as a “very nominal” number now still available.

Valcke yesterday said that all was “nearly perfect" with preparations, although he is unhappy that only 40,000 tickets had been sold to fans from other African nations.

“We can definitely talk about a disappointment when we see the number of tickets sold in Africa,” he said.

"The target is to reach about 97 or 98 per cent [of ticket sales], which would correspond with the figures from the past Fifa World Cups and this would make us very happy. We were a bit concerned a few months ago, now we are definitely pleased.”

Despite the controversy at the 2006 World Cup over the shortage of tickets for supporters, Fifa have allowed all the national football associations to offer 700 tickets per game to their so-called ‘Football Family’.

In England, the ‘Football Family’ includes FA staff, players' families, corporate partners and officials from county FAs, the PFA, the League Managers’ Association as well as Premier and Football League clubs.

This comes out of the 12 per cent of ‘saleable’ tickets that is offered to each competing association for group matches; a figure that drops to eight per cent for the knockout phase.

It means that English FA have an allocation of just over 4,000 fans for the opening match against the USA in Rustenburg. Yet should England win the group, that number would fall to below 3,000 for their last 16 knockout match at the same venue.

World Cup numbers

160,500: The number of unsold tickets for the World Cup

£623: Cost of most expensive category one ticket

2.9 million: The total number of World Cup tickets

24,000: Number of tickets FA have sold to England fans

8,000: Total number of unsold tickets for England's three group games