Who's going to Russia anyway?

ConorMac77 wrote: eireland wrote: ConorMac77 wrote: eireland wrote: ConorMac77 wrote: eireland wrote: conor253 wrote: The portal opened up at 10am this morning. Is anyone waiting in the queue? I'm about 1/3 way through the line in the last 50mins.  Got in already and managed to get Portugal tickets and Argentina aswell. What are you looking for yourself?  Only about a quarter of the way through the line so not holding out much hope.  How did you manage to get in so early, if you don't mind me asking, Eireland? Had about 15 different queues going between different devices and browsers both incognito and normal. One of the queues happened to only be around 30 mins long so just stuck with that. In the end took about 50 mins but by the looks of it Argentina vs Iceland is the only match I wouldn't be able to get. I even managed to get final tickets in my basket although I didn't buy them.  Ah right, I see.  Thanks Eireland. I only had 1 queue going, and it's about 1/3 of the way through now.  Suppose Serbia-Brazil and Nigeria-Argentina were gone though? Neither showing currently but I've noticed Argentina v Nigeria popping up sporadically.  Yeah, spotted one there but was too slow to get it in the basket.   Bloody bots!

Yeah, it's annoying alright.  Took me about 40 attempts to finally get through to payment page, was also booted out completely along the way. 

Done now, goodbye FCFS portal. 

Anyone got a script?

conor253 wrote: For anyone that has applied for the Fan ID, how long did it take to come through the post? Mine arrived at the Russian Mail on April 3rd and it took until the 9th to leave Russia according to the tracking they provided. No sign of it yet.

GreenArmy! wrote: eireland wrote: conor253 wrote: For anyone that has applied for the Fan ID, how long did it take to come through the post? Mine arrived at the Russian Mail on April 3rd and it took until the 9th to leave Russia according to the tracking they provided. No sign of it yet. same as yourself. from reading online it could take another few weeks which is a balls because you need it to book the free fan trains and they are booking out fast.   You don't need your FAN ID for this just a booking reference from a successful application. As per UCD's post mine was "Realesed from Russia" on the 9th of April.

Edited by eireland - 19 Apr 2018 at 2:57am

It is possible to collect match tickets in the airports if that works for you. 

It really depends on which airport you are flying into and what day. 

BohsinMunich wrote: Looking to go for the weekend of the Germany Mexico match but the prices are almost off putting e.g. Bogo apartments has 1 left but it is between 900€ - 1000€ for 2 (for 2 people) nights with no cancellation (If you put in Saturday to Monday at the start of June the same room is 120€ with free cancellation) Seems like hotels in Moscow are looking to make a lot of money out of the World Cup :->

Might be worth having a look at accommodation in surrounding towns.  Fairly decent railway links and that match will be over at 8pm so plenty of time to get back afterwards. 

ConorMac77 wrote: So it looks like I can write off any chances that I might have had of getting either of the tickets I was looking for (Nigeria-Argentina and Serbia-Brazil).   Just thinking though, that one way I could get into and out of Russia without going through that visa application process () might be by buying a Cat 3 ticket for a low demand match eg Panama v Tunisia and using that purchase reference to apply for a Fan-ID card.    I tried the purchase process for this earlier but part of it involves booking an appointment to turn up at one of the Ticket Collection Centres in Russia to collect said ticket.  Apologies if this sounds like a stupid question but could this be a viable option? Would there be any comeback if I was to buy a ticket and not turn up at the collection centre at the appointed time?  Last thing I want is to have that Fan-ID revoked and me getting chucked in some gulag for then being in the country illegally, unlikely though as that is.

What happened during the last euros was that tickets became available during the tournament, in particular the knockout phase, and were released each morning at a set time. The portal closed overnight and re-opened at 10am the next day.

The reason was straightforward: as teams got knocked out, their conditional tickets became available. I'm sure there were plenty on here who had tickets for Ireland matches the further they made in through. But the point is not everyone did. So when Ireland were playing France, there were maybe five thousand conditional Ireland tickets sold for the quarters, but maybe eight thousand conditional France tickets sold. That meant that there were three thousand tickets for the quarter final that had to be sold if Ireland made it - they went on the portal the following morning. It definitely happened after Wales knocked out Belgium, for instance.

It was obvious with both Wales and Portugal, more than anyone else. They had sold a lot fewer conditional tickets, so there were tickets available for their quarters and semis, as well as the final, because they had sold far fewer conditional tickets for those games than some of the other teams (much and all as the North hadn't sold so many). It also seemed that the tickets were only released once the lineup for each game was confirmed - for instance, say it is obvious before a quarter that neither team has sold their full allocation of conditional semi final tickets (one with two thousand, one with three thousand, from a total of four thousand), the two thousand tickets will only be released after the quarter final, rather than releasing one thousand before and other one thousand after.

Now, the World Cup is a bit different, in that there were two types of tickets available: Team Specific Tickets (TSTs )and Conditional Supporter Tickets (CSTs). The Euros were more like the latter than the former but there are probably still plenty of CSTs sold for this tournament. What are they, you ask? Well, a TST guarantees you tickets for a certain number of matches. If you bought a TST6 for Denmark, then you got tickets for the three Denmark group games and the last 16, quarter and semi, regardless of whether Denmark make it that far... you follow the team that knock them out, or the group winner if they get knocked out in the group.

However, the CSTs are the interesting ones: they are the ones that only apply if your team make it that far. Say you have CST tickets for Denmark in the quarters and they don't make it, then you get your money back. There will, no doubt, be situations that arise where there are teams playing each other in the knockouts where some have not sold all their conditional tickets. Like I imagine Panama have relatively few conditional tickets sold for the final. There are always teams who go far. Now, assuming two big sides make the finals, they will probably have sold their full allocation of CSTs.... but there is always a chance they won't have done. Like in the last Euros, there were tickets available for the final in the morning after the semi finals. That's because Portugal hadn't sold the full allocation of tickets to the final.

The only other thing, I suppose, is that it'd be a pain in the arse trying to deal with getting a FAN ID at late notice, but if you had one already it would be grand.


Edited by SuperDave84 - 19 Apr 2018 at 8:24pm