World Cup crowds set for 16-year high 02/07/2010 |
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World Cup organisers have predicted that the total attendance in South Africa will top 3 million – the largest cumulative crowd since USA ‘94.
Despite concerns over Fifa’s ticketing strategy, South Africa 2010 chief executive Danny Jordaan has revealed that the tournament is on course to be the best-attended World Cup for 16 years.
The total attendance to date is 2.69 million and Jordaan said he was confident the final total would surpass 3 million.
"We are going into the quarter-finals of a wonderful, people-driven World Cup,” he added. “It's really the people of this country and the foreign fans that have injected the energy and the passion into this World Cup.
"We have the possibility of an African team going beyond the frontiers of what has been achieved before. We also have the possibility of two coaches [Dunga and Diego Maradona] going where only Franz Beckenbauer has gone before and winning the World Cup as a player and a coach.
“There is also the possibility of a Brazil v Argentina final, which of course is one of the biggest games you can have from a South American point of view."
Jordaan said the tournament is on course to hit the original targets that were set in 2004 in terms of visitor numbers and impact on the local economy.
The predictions were downgraded prior to the tournament amid fears about the effect of the global recession. But Jordaan announced that more than 9bn rand (£772m) has been spent by overseas visitors already, suggesting that the original target of 11.2bn rand will at least be achieved, if not overtaken.
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