At last! It seems that sense has prevailed and the sales of tickets for 2010 will be eased by the governing body - and not before time. According to a report in Bizcommunity.com today, a second participating member associations (PMAs) sales phase is to take place between 9 February and 7 April 2010.But is this enough? Does FIFA need to make more changes [poll]? As far as many people are concerned, buying tickets for the event has been overly difficult; most of us expect to simply go to establishments such as Computicket or some other ticket sales facility, and simply buy the tickets we need. Presumably for its own very good reasons, FIFA's ticketing procedure has been difficult - even for computer-savvy fans. For the many hundreds of thousands of soccer fans unfamiliar with the Internet, however, booking a ticket (assuming they can get the cash to pay for it) must have been well-nigh impossible. This is Africa, not Europe, and if FIFA wants to see local fans attending matches, tickets not only need to be affordable, but the procedure to purchase needs to be as straightforward as possible. If either requirement is lacking, sales will not reach their full potential. Our 2010 Trends series continues this week, and one trend that keeps on recurring, especially visible in the 2010 trends tag cloud, is the continued rise of social media. There's a helluva lot more happening, of course, so go check it out for yourself - and don't forget to add your voice to the debate by commenting! Have a great week! Simone Puterman & Rod Baker
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