Who’s Traveling to Brazil to Watch the World Cup?

Fans of Brazil’s national soccer team will certainly be well-represented at the World Cup when it kicks off next week.

Brazil’s Neymar during an international friendly soccer match in March.

REUTERS

Not only do Brazilians make up the bulk of the tourists traveling throughout Brazil for the competition, but they’ve bought the most tickets, too. The Brazilian government reported this week that Brazilians have bought 1.4 million World Cup tickets, while U.S. ticket buyers placed a far second, snapping up about 197,000 of the highly sought tickets. Other Latin American and European countries placed in the top rankings as well, while Australia is the lone country in the top 10 that isn’t from the Americas or Europe.

Those still interested in seeing one of the games might have a tiny chance. Brazil says 2,961,911 tickets have been sold out of the more than three million available, and that there are “a few” tickets left — though not for sold-out events like the opening match, semifinals and finals.
Soccer’s organizing body FIFA put an additional 180,000 tickets up for sale this week, after delays in building stadiums forced it to wait until the last minute to calculate exactly how many seats would be available.
FIFA has received more than a whopping 11 million ticket requests, according to the Brazilian government.