Over 1.5 million Fan IDs issued as World Cup's group stage ends

Moscow  : More than 1.5 million Fan IDs have been issued for the spectators by the end of the FIFA World Cup Russia group stage, CEO of the 2018 Local Organising Committee (LOC) Alexei Sorokin said on Friday.

"Even we, the organisers, are surprised by the figures. Some 1.5 million Fan IDs have been issued out of 1.627 million confirmed ones," Sorokin said, reports Tass news agency.

According to the LOC, Russian citizens received the biggest number of Fan IDs (874,000), followed by Chinese nationals (61,000) and US citizens (50,000), whose teams are not participating in the World Cup in Russia. Mexico ranks fourth (43,000), followed by Argentina (36,000), Brazil (32,000), Colombia and Germany (29,000), Peru (26,000) and Egypt (23,000).

Some 428,000 Fan IDs have been delivered abroad by mail, and among the most popular destinations were Lima (12,000), Buenos Aires (10,000), London (9,000), Sao Paulo (8,000), Dubai and Beijing (7,000).

More than 700,000 foreign football fans have come to Russia. The LOC expects that several more thousands of fans will head to the FIFA World Cup knockout stage.

According to the LOC estimates, on June 14-28, some 6.7 million passengers arrived by 41,300 flights at a total of 13 airports in 11 host cities. Foreign air carriers ran some 2,800 flights. On June 12-28, more than 213,000 passengers travelled by 487 trains free of charge.

The attendance of the group stage matches hit 97% and more than 2.6 million tickets were sold for 48 games.

More than 17,000 volunteers of the organising committee and another 18,000 city volunteers worked at the matches.