FIFA ticket portal
On 27th March, FIFA opened an online ticket portal for fans on the FIFA website at www.FIFAworldcup.com, via which match tickets could be handed back or transferred to other people.  “We are thus keeping our promise to provide a service-oriented, non-bureaucratic solution for the benefit of the fans”, said Horst R. Schmidt, Senior OC Vice President.  However, this solution provided no mechanism for the legal holders of tickets to do a swap. 

50,000+ tickets changed hands
Despite this lack of a swap facility, before the portal closed for a 3-week spell on 9th April, over 50,000 tickets (around 5% of the number sold by FIFA direct to the public) had been resold or transferred.

Matchmaking for FIFA?
The way in which FIFA has sold tickets for this World Cup has now led to countless fans all over the world trying to find other fans with whom to swap, so that they can end up with tickets for the games they really want to see.  It has also led to the creation of match-making websites, such as the UK-based www.TicketSwapShop.com, where you can post details for free of tickets you want to swap and indicate, also for free, what tickets you are desperate to find.  When a match is found, you are sent a notification by e-mail.

1,000+ tickets on offer
www.TicketSwapShop.com had - last time we checked - over 1,000 users offering tickets to swap for 63 of the 64 World Cup games, many specifying that they wished to effect the swap via the FIFA ticket portal - the method of exchange that we would recommend.  To communicate with another fan with a matching ticket swap, you need to become a registered user of the site, which costs 25 euros.  After that, the swap is effected purely between the 2 fans.

Swap via FIFA site
While the FIFA ticket portal unfortunately did not materialise as the much vaunted FIFA ticket exchange, it may be that by finding potential swap partners through a site like www.TicketSwapShop.com and then using the FIFA ticket portal to effect two transfers (one each way), this facility may yet go some way to getting the tickets into the hands of the fans that really want to see each game!

Acceptable reasons for a transfer
Of course, to effect a transfer via the FIFA ticket portal, you need to give a reason that FIFA will find acceptable.  The seven reasons you are invited to choose from are:

• Transfer within a family or legally recognised quasi-family unit 
• Ticket holder is ill 
• Ticket holder cannot get a visa for Germany
• Ticket holder is banned from travelling abroad 
• Matters beyond the ticket holder’s control (e.g. political unrest, epidemics, natural catastrophes) 
• Death (of the ticket holder or within their family) 
• Any other case of hardship

"We want to benefit the fans"
How will FIFA decide whether to accept the reason you give? “When it come to makings these decisions, we’re going to be torn in two ways”, explains FIFA's Schmidt.  “Naturally we want to try to benefit the fans with our decisions, but due to the well-known security requirements we must at the same time also allow the necessary sensitivity to prevail... by providing this opportunity we are certainly going a long way to accommodate our customers.”  A fee of €10 is payable by the buyer for each ticket transfer.

Hardship or in the family
Well, we're all part of the "football family", aren't we?  And if a fan knew that they could get a ticket via a swap for the match they desperately wanted to see, then surely even FIFA would appreciate that it would be an extreme "case of hardship" for that fan (whom they had previously vetted and from whom they had happily taken money) to have to forgo that opportunity!

Ticket portal open for business
The portal's second period of operation runs from 1st May until two days before each game.  Good luck in getting a ticket for the game you really want to see!

Footnote: Against the black market
We're as much against the black market as the next man and support all reasonable efforts to fight it.  However, we fail to see why - having forced fans to buy 812,000 tickets during the first phase of ticket sales, i.e. around 75% of all tickets sold by FIFA direct to the public, at a time when none of the fixtures were known, FIFA will not allow the legal owner of a ticket for a match in which they have little interest to swap this for a ticket for a game they are desperate to see, where such a ticket - also legally acquired from FIFA - is on offer from another fan, who has little interest in the game that their ticket is for, but is desperate to the see the game covered by the ticket being offered by their potential swap partner.  Clearly this would not be a black market transaction, and clearly it would result in more genuine fans getting to see their team.

We have put this point directly to Herr Schmidt.  To date we have received no reply.