Uefa leaves Irish fans in the dark over Euro 2016 tickets

The process of informing Republic of Ireland supporters who applied for Euro 2016 tickets whether they have

tickets for the games against Sweden, Belgium, and Italy will continue over the weekend according to the FAI.

However, the association insists it may be the end of the month before it is clear who has obtained seats.

The FAI announced yesterday that an additional 832 tickets had been made available by Uefa, bringing to 33,334 the number available for Ireland’s three group games.

The association has expressed confidence that the bulk of the team’s most loyal fans will get tickets for the opening game against Sweden, but there is less certainty about the later group games, against Belgium and Italy, in Bordeaux and Lille respectively.

Anger

There was anger in Belgium yesterday over the way the tickets had been distributed there, with many fans complaining that that the association’s guidelines on loyalty points had not been properly applied by Uefa.

Similar complaints had been made by Northern Ireland fans earlier this week. Uefa subsequently made almost 1,000 extra tickets available, after many fans with significant numbers of loyalty points had lost out, especially with regard to higher priced tickets, to fans with no firm record of attending national team games.

It is not yet clear whether similar problems might arise with the distribution of tickets to Ireland fans as Uefa begins the process of taking money from applicants’ bank accounts.

In the absence of confirmation emails yesterday, many Irish fans were reduced to attempting to figure out what tickets they had been allocated on the basis of the amount of money that had been deducted from their bank accounts.