WORLD CUP 2010: OWEN GIBSONreports on an important day for this year's World Cup as 500,000 tickets go on sale in South Africa

OF ALL the staging posts that have marked the progress towards Africa’s first World Cup, today’s could be one of the most significant in deciding its fate. This morning Fifa-accredited ticket booths in the centre of the nine host cities and a network of supermarkets across the country will open for business and begin trying to shift the 500,000 tickets that remain on a first-come, first -served basis.

That represents almost a fifth of the 2.7million available, with tickets remaining for all 64 games including the final at Soccer City. In all, just over three million tickets were released, but demand from Europe has been lower than expected.

The bottom has fallen out of the hospitality market with the global recession affecting the number of tickets sold by Match, the company that bought the rights to resell an estimated 380,000 such tickets through a network of agents.

It will only break even on the 2010 tournament, a spokesman admitted yesterday: “The global recession and perceived security concerns have had a detrimental effect on demand. However, we remain on course to fulfil a hospitality programme of similar scope and magnitude to that of 2006 and most certainly far larger than that of 2002.”

The recession has also impacted on the accredited travel agents and unofficial touts who may be left holding fistfuls of tickets. No one knows just how many of these remain unsold with less than two months to go before the opening match between South Africa and Mexico.

Fifa has admitted that a “significant” number of tickets have been returned by official sponsors and partners to be resold to the general public, but argues that this is standard practice. The situation is complex. The doomsday scenario of hundreds of millions of TV viewers tuning in to see embarrassing swathes of empty seats is unlikely to materialise.

But Fifa sources acknowledge that tickets are likely to be on sale for some matches right up until the day of the game.

Almost one million tickets have now been sold to domestic buyers (compared to the 800,000 that had been sold to Germans at the same stage in 2006) and sales picked up as excitement mounted following the draw in December.

“We started off slowly but South Africa has now warmed to the event,” Danny Jordaan, chief executive of the South African 2010 organising committee, said yesterday.

But there remain fears that the World Cup will not reach the vast majority of South Africans because prices remain too high.

Fifa argues that the cheapest tickets cost less than in Germany in 2006, that it has met a pledge to reserve 25 per cent of the cheapest category four tickets for domestic buyers and has listened to concerns over the way they are sold.

But the reality is that those in the game’s South African heartlands in townships such as Soweto, in the shadow of the impressive bowl of Soccer City, and Khayelitsha, a few miles from the gleaming Green Point stadium in Cape Town, will not get anywhere near a match.

At 140 rand (€14), even the cheapest tickets for group games are beyond the reach of many people in a country where the average monthly wage is estimated at just over 2,700 rand (€270) and tickets for a Premier League match typically costs 20 rand (€2).

Among the black population, who make up by far the majority at matches, the monthly average wage is 1,620 rand (€162).

The way in which tickets have been sold in the four phases to date, via an internet ballot, has been criticised and Fifa has only belatedly adjusted its selling techniques to take account of low internet and credit card penetration in the host country.

Jerome Valcke, the Fifa general secretary responsible for the World Cup, admitted as much when asked if mistakes had been made. “Yes, definitely. The approach at the beginning by using internet and by using computers was not the most friendly system for the South Africans.”

The importance of those South Africans who can afford the more unattractive group matches has increased. Original hopes that 450,000 – including up to 50,000 England fans – would travel have proved optimistic. Valcke now predicts up to 350,000 will come.

He has raged against the British and German media for overplaying security fears.

However, prices have been a bigger concern than safety for some European fans. England fans still complain of sky high prices and complex logistical challenges in, for example, travelling from Rustenburg, where England will start against the US, to Cape Town, where they will play their second group match.

And for all the rhetoric about this being not just South Africa’s World Cup but the whole of the continent’s, supporters from the five other African qualifiers will be underrepresented.

The culture of not buying tickets in advance is a factor but it was not until a few months before the tournament that organisers began to tackle the other underlying causes – not least the fact that to get to South Africa from most other cities on the continent you have to fly via Europe at huge expense.

In recent weeks, Fifa has toured Africa to drum up interest and raise awareness of travel options.

Valcke has already admitted that Fifa’s experiences with the 2010 World Cup would lead to a rethink of its ticketing strategy for the 2014 tournament in Brazil. Fifa will sell more tickets directly and give fewer to travel agents.

There are no financial repercussions for Fifa, though – it has already banked a record €2.34 billion from pre-selling the marketing and TV rights and Match has already paid handsomely for the right to resell hospitality.