Chronicle Editor
Tickets for the World Cup in Russia have gone on sale with the cheapest group stage matches available at £80 for overseas supporters — and special seats for obese people.
The most expensive ticket is priced at £829 — a Category 1 seat for the World Cup final at the Luzhniki Stadium in Moscow.
That price is a £151 increase on the equivalent ticket at the 2014 Brazil World Cup final in Rio de Janeiro.
Special tickets have been made available for obese people, whose body mass index exceeds or is equal to 35 metres per square metre. This is roughly the equivalent of a someone who is 5ft 10ins and weighs 18 stone. It’s the second time “bese persons” tickets have been made available for a World Cup — they were first introduced by Fifa for the 2014 finals in Brazil. Fans can now begin applying for tickets to any of the 64 matches but there is no need to rush the process with the deadline not until October 12.
Applicants will then be selected at random and notified whether they have been successful by November 16.
Russian residents will be able to purchase their own special Category 4 tickets which start at just £17 ahead of the first ever World Cup finals to be held in their country.
Meanwhile, Seventeen national anti-doping organisations have demanded that Russia is banned from the 2018 Winter Olympics.Less than five months before the start of the Pyeongchang Games, the group said the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) “refusal to hold Russia accountable for one of the biggest scandals in sports history… imperils clean athletes and the future of the Olympic movement”. — dailyonline.
Online Reporter