Only half of world cup tickets sold

As fans prepare to receive the first batch of Rugby World Cup 2011 tickets, more than 800,000 tickets to the tournament remain unsold.

About 1.6 million tickets are available for the event and organisers have set a target of selling 1.35 million (82%) of them.

However, the Christchurch earthquake and subsequent relocation of eight matches has been a major setback.

Prior to the refunds triggered by the Christchurch earthquake RNZ 2011 had sold a total of 919,000 tickets worth $189 million (70% of the overall sales target of $268 million).

Following the cancellation of ticket sales for the eight relocated matches, and the full refund to those affected ticket purchasers, the sales equation now stands at 790,000 tickets sold, worth $169 million in total.

“Pre-Christchurch, ticket sales were exactly where we expected them to be,” tournament organiser Rugby New Zealand 2011’s chief executive Martin Snedden said.

“The transfer of matches so close to kick-off is unprecedented for any major event and has created significant additional challenges, but we remain confident that we should be able to recoup the bulk of the refunded sales within the next two months or so.

“In addition, RNZ 2011 has the appropriate insurance arrangements in place for this type of incident.”

Included in the current sales figures are 105,000 tickets so far committed to through the RWC 2011 Official Travel Agency (OTA) programme.

This is up from the 70,000 tickets originally committed to by that programme and already outstrips the RWC 2003 total OTA sales of 85,000.

“Total OTA sales to date have been excellent and we remain hopeful that more sales within this programme will occur between now and Tournament time,” Mr Snedden said.

“Overall, we still remain confident that, by tournament-end, we will achieve our sales target of $268 million and 1.35 million tickets.”

One bright spot is the better than-expected interest from Australians: 29,000 Aussies are now predicted to visit for the cup, better than the original 2005 forecast of 17,000 and a 2010 Tourism Ministry forecast of 21,300.

Individual tickets go on sale in July.