Huge demand as Euro 2020 ticket deadline approaches

The first phase of ticket sales for all games at Euro 2020, including the four to be staged in Dublin, will close at lunchtime on Friday with Uefa warning that this could be the last chance for ordinary supporters in host nations like Ireland to secure seats at matches.

Around 1.5 million tickets are up for grabs in the current round of sales and with over 14 million applications to date according to Uefa, demand far outstrips supply. A ballot will be held after Friday’s 1pm (Irish time) deadline to determine who secures the tickets.

Supporters can apply to attend any game across the entire tournament and no tickets have been reserved for people living locally in any of the host nations. Philippe Margraff, Head of Revenue Operations at Uefa told RTE's Morning Ireland that applications from 190 countries had been received so far.

Roughly half the capacity, 25,000 tickets, for the each of the four games in Dublin - three of them in the group stages and one in the round of 16 - will be sold in this round with prices set for all of them set at €50, €125 and €185. Margraff, predictably enough, suggests that fans will give themselves a better chance of being successful in the ballot by going for the higher priced seats.

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“It’s clear that the demand has been very strong,” he said. “The tournament has been very well welcomed by fans. We are significantly ahead of Euro 2016 at the same time; that’s the case as well for Dublin where there is a very strong demand.

“The best way (to be successful in the ballot) is to apply for the higher category of tickets because we have three categories and we have very large demand for the more accessible tickets, the cheaper tickets. We start at €50 and therefore the best way to increase your chance is to apply for the higher categories where the demand is not as big.”

On the website (euro2020.com/tickets) there is the opportunity to get a basic sense of the demand for particular categories of tickets and, sure enough, the colour coding suggests that there has been less demand to date for the higher priced seats at venues like the Aviva stadium (or Dublin Arena as it will be known for the purposes of this tournament).

Demand for the most prominent games is huge, though, with over 1.5 million applications combined by Wednesday of this week for the two semi-finals at Wembley where prices start at €85 but where the bulk of the tickets will cost €195, €345 and €595.

For the final, also to be staged in London, the cheapest “fans first” tickets will cost €95 while the category three, two and one tickets will cost €295, €595 and €945 respectively. In all cases, successful applicants will be notified that they are to be allocated tickets and around 10 days’ notice is given that the funds are to be taken from their credit cards.

Supporters can apply for as many tickets as they want at this stage across any number of venues with a maximum of four per game and one game per day. Uefa says that the average request up until this week has been for 12 tickets across at least two venues. Just over half of those who have registered have sought to purchase tickets for games in more than one city.

A final sales phase will be held in December after qualifying is complete when a further one million tickets will be sold but these will be targeted at fans of the qualified teams and so Uefa suggest that this may be the last opportunity for people in places like Ireland to purchase seats for games to be staged in their country as, if the Republic of Ireland do not qualify for the finals, then opportunities to secure tickets between now and next summer will be extremely limited.