FIFA have announced that more than 3.5 million requests from 199 countries have been made for World Cup tickets in the second sale phase.

‘‘With a little more than three million tickets available at the 12 (host) stadiums, the requests are at least 10 times more than the inventory we have available,’’ said Thierry Weil, FIFA marketing director in charge of ticketing.

In high demand: Ten times the amount of tickets available for the FIFA World Cup have been requested. Credit:AFP

A FIFA statement said nearly 80 per cent of requests came from Brazilians, who asked for more than 2.6 million tickets for 62 of the 64 matches on offer.