A FIFA spokesman told that 2.95 million tickets had been sold up to Sunday's opening day. The start of the World Cup has led to a surge of interest in the 64 matches over 29 days. Queues have built up outside the FIFA ticket centre in Doha and fans report long waits to get onto the official online ticket platform. With this, Qatar has already overtaken Russia 2018, when just over 2.4 million tickets were sold.
As per the spokesman, Saudi Arabia, the United States, Mexico, Britain, United Arab Emirates, Argentina, France, India, and Brazil were the top markets. FIFA president Gianni Infantino told a conference earlier that the world body's four-year revenues were estimated to hit $7.5 billion by the end of the year. Revenues are more than $1 billion higher than predicted four years ago.
Infantino told the 211 member associations that the "amazing figures" came "in spite of Covid, in spite of different crises around the world". He said new rules regulating football agents would be announced this year.
