Toulouse (AFP)
A new phase of ticket sales for the 2023 Rugby World Cup opens on Tuesday, with packs of two matches, including the quarter-finals.
The organizers of the Mondial-2023, which will take place in France from September 8 to October 28, 2023, aim to sell "100% of the tickets", according to the director general of the organizing committee Claude Atcher, in an interview with AFP.
Around 250,000 tickets will go on sale during this second phase, first open to members of the "2023 Family", registered on the official ticketing site, then to everyone from Thursday.
These will be packs of two matches: for the quarter-finals, scheduled at the Stade de France and the Stade Vélodrome in Marseille, or for group matches in each of the nine cities hosting the competition.
It will then be possible to choose the first match, but the second, "a little less prestigious", will be imposed in order to "balance sales in each of the cities", explained Claude Atcher.
"The appetite coming while eating, we intend to sell 100% of the tickets", he affirmed, reinforced by the success of the first phase of sale, marked in the spring by computer problems, which had caused disappointed.
"There was a lot of talk about technical problems in the first phase, but in fact our servers all kept out of a 7-minute break on the first day", underlined Claude Atcher.
Two problems have according to him "disturbed the system": payments with stolen cards and those exceeding the limit authorized by the banks.
Online ticketing has since been strengthened, assured the head of the organizing committee, who said he was ready to face the influx expected for the second phase: "We prepared. It's like a match of rugby, we know that it will + sting + in the first quarter of an hour ".
New tickets (for the semi-finals and the final) will go on sale in spring 2022 at the end of the next Six Nations Tournament, then in September 2022, individually, for what will remain.
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