UEFA officially opened ticket sales for Euro 2012 on Tuesday in a Warsaw ceremony presided over by UEFA president Michel Platini, who used the occasion to award complimentary seats to Polish fans.
Pawel Michalczak, a 34-year-old forester living near Warsaw, received three tickets for Poland's group-stage fixtures after winning a UEFA fan competition. Platini also drew a second name at the ceremony, Ewa Lewczuk, calling her live from the stage to inform her she had won four seats for Poland's 8 June 2012 match in Warsaw, the tournament's opening game. At a concurrent ceremony in Kyiv, UEFA executive Frantisek Laurinec awarded four tickets to primary school teacher Vita Lavrenko for Ukraine's 11 June group fixture.
Over 550,000 tickets are on offer to the general public. Demand has consistently outpaced supply at past tournaments: 10.4 million applicants competed for just 300,000 seats at Euro 2008.
Fans may register through the end of March at uefa.com, the sole authorized sales channel, with a lottery in April determining who can buy. By Tuesday, 591,000 people had applied, 70 percent of them from Poland and Ukraine and the rest from 159 other countries. UEFA officials noted that registering early confers no advantage over applying later in the month.
Historical summary. TurkishPress restated this wire report, first published in March 2011, in its own words.