Auckland: Organisers of next year's Rugby World Cup in New Zealand are delighted with the early interest in tickets with more than 50,000 people pre-registering to purchase team or venue packages.
Applications for tickets, which is the only source of revenue for organisers, open today though rugby fans have been able to register their interest in acquiring tickets to follow specific teams or for individual venues since March.
More than 20,000 of the applications had come from outside New Zealand, organisers said in a statement yesterday, with the majority of those coming from Britain, Australia, Ireland, France, the US, South Africa and Canada.
Local organisers must rely on ticket sales to cover the cost of hosting the September 9 to October 23 tournament, with the International Rugby Board (IRB) retaining all commercially generated income as well as taking a NZ$150 million (Dh394 million) hosting fee.
The tournament's operating loss is expected to be around NZ$40 million, which is being underwritten by the government and New Zealand Rugby Union, and Rugby New Zealand 2011 chief executive Martin Snedden was ecstatic with the response by fans.
‘Fantastic'
"This is a fantastic response and shows how popular rugby World Cup has become around the world," he said in the statement. "The rest of the world knows that RWC 2011 is going to be a special event so I urge Kiwi fans to take advantage of this first phase of ticketing."
Organisers said last week 85,000 tickets had been sold already through official travel packages, while one UK official travel agent had reported sales nearly 40 per cent up on those over the same period for the 2007 tournament in France.
