Another last chance to get those RWC tickets

Photo / Richard Robinson

Thousands of tickets to the Rugby World Cup are still available despite earlier warnings that seats would sell out.

Some are even available for the opening match, between New Zealand and Tonga, at Eden Park.

Tickets will go on sale today for most of the games.

Between 1000 and 2000 tickets are still available, including for seats at five of the nine games to be played at Eden Park.

The excess ticket sale comes after World Cup officials urged fans to buy tickets quickly so they did not miss out.

Before the second phase of ticket sales, in August, RNZ 2011 chief executive Martin Snedden told rugby fans to get in quickly as it might be their last chance.

"I urge fans to take advantage of this phase as it may well be their last chance to buy tickets until well into next year and also the last chance to enter the ballots for semi-finals and final tickets," Mr Snedden said then. .

When Rugby New Zealand communications manager Mike Jaspers was asked why tickets had not sold out as predicted, he said: "We didn't expect all of the tickets to go. Likewise, we didn't expect all the team and venue packets to go in phase one, which is why we had subsequent phases.

"But in terms of overall sales, we're certainly tracking as we expected."

He said "it was always going to take time" to sell the 1.65 million tickets in total to all of the matches.

Organisers had always expected tickets to be left over.

He said it was to be expected that All Black games were the ones with the least tickets left, as "New Zealanders want to watch their own team".

Most of the New Zealand games have sold out, although there are category A tickets to the New Zealand versus Tonga game for $460.

Some $256 category A tickets are also available for the New Zealand-Canada game in Wellington.

There are also plenty of tickets available for the third-place play off.

The tickets are the leftovers from the second phase of ticketing, in which about 400,000 individual tickets went on sale.

Said Mr Jaspers: "It's the last chance until next year when there will be further public sales, but that won't be until much later in next year so there's no guarantee what will be available next year.

"So it's really a question of getting in now if you want to ensure yourself that you'll see some of these matches."

All remaining tickets to any match will go on sale around the middle of next year.

Phase one was package deals for certain rugby teams or locations so that fans could bulk-buy tickets to watch their favourite team or for all the games at their local stadium.

Phase two was for people who wanted to watch particular games.

WHAT'S ON SALE AND HOW TO BUY

Tickets on sale from 9am at www.rugbyworldcup.com/tickets

GAMES:

* New Zealand v Tonga, Eden Park, 9 Sept, $460.

* Australia v Ireland, Eden Park, 17 Sept, $358 and $296.

* Fiji v Samoa, Eden Park, 25 Sept, $123, $97 and $61.

* England v Scotland, Eden Park, 1 Oct, $358.

* New Zealand v Canada, Wellington, 2 Oct, $256.