World Cup Perks for Parliamentarians?

All of Germany’s 603 federal members of parliament recently received a letter which is bound to be attended to far more quickly than most of the other correspondence in their in-trays.

According to a report in Saarbrücker Zeitung on Friday, the letter came from two members of the parliamentary sports committee and invited parliamentarians to pre-book two tickets each for a match of their choice in the preliminary round of the 2006 World Soccer Championship.

The sports committee has admitted that it sent a special request to the organizing team of the championship to provide a fixed amount of tickets up front for the honorable members of parliament.

Organizers deny allegations

Organizers of the championship have rejected allegations that parliamentarians have been promised tickets, saying that there was only an agreement with the parliamentary sports committee to gather ticket requests and check whether they could be taken care of.

Nevertheless, the news about the special treatment granted to lawmakers has been raising the hackles of ordinary football fans who will have to wait until Feb. 1, when preliminary ticket sales are scheduled.

Three million tickets will be on sale for the championship. But for every fan who secures a ticket, there will be at least ten other fans who will go away empty-handed. In other words, the chance of actually getting a ticket are very slim. And Germans won't be given preferential treatment even though their country is hosting the tournament.

Cynics, commenting on the letter, have been echoing a famous quote by the British novelist George Orwell. "Everyone’s equal in this country," they say, "but some are more equal than others."

Concern about dubious sellers

But the deputy chief of the organizing committee, Wolfgang Niersbach, said he’s more concerned by the mushrooming of ticket sales by dubious agencies on the Internet.

"Let me assure you that there are no tickets on the market yet at all," he said. "We’ve not even agreed yet on the design and the format of the tickets. You can clearly see from this that there just can’t be any tickets up for sale at present."

Niersbach added that those already selling tickets on the Internet are probably hoping to secure some themselves and then re-sell them. But there is no guarantee whatsoever that buyers will be refunded if sellers are unable to deliver, he said.

"People who make use of the various offers on the Internet need to be warned," he said. "These self-styled ticket agents are not be trusted. So, anyone who chooses to buy tickets from them is running the high risk of losing a lot of money and never seeing any of the 2006 championship matches from inside a stadium in Germany."

Niersbach also pointed out that an agency by the name of iSe-Hospitality is the only one which has been granted a licence by FIFA to sell championship tickets with VIP status. The company has paid €180 million ($239 million) for the licence which includes exclusive rights to provide catering facilities inside the stadiums.