There will be no standing room at the 2024 European Football Championship in Germany. The European association UEFA announced this together with the German Football Association (DFB) on Tuesday (September 12th, 2023) along with the ticket prices. For fans who miss out on the cheapest category, it can be very expensive.
UEFA has “very seriously examined” whether there should be standing room at EURO 2024, as is usual in Germany for Bundesliga games. Ultimately, she decided against it for various reasons, says Martin Kallen, managing director of the organizing subsidiary “UEFA Events SA”.
“The police were strictly against it for reasons of public safety,” said the Swiss, without wanting to go into detail with which German authorities the agreements were made.
UEFA expects revenue of 2.3 billion euros
Another reason was that the standing room could not have been distributed fairly between the two teams’ fan camps without major renovations in the ten stadiums. UEFA would have had to bear the costs of the renovations, but it was not prepared to do so.
The European association expects sales of 2.3 billion euros at EURO 2024. EURO 2020, which was held a year later due to the pandemic, brought less than two billion into the continental association’s coffers, mainly due to corona. At a good 1.9 billion euros, revenue from EURO 2016 in France was higher than at the pan-European edition five years later.
Tickets from 30 to 1,000 euros
According to UEFA’s ideas, ticket revenue should amount to 300 million euros. This does not include the income from hospitality tickets, which have been available for purchase for weeks. The application for the other, exclusively digital tickets begins symbolically on October 3rd, the Day of German Unity. Anyone who registers on the sales website “EURO2024.com” can order up to four tickets per game and then has to hope to be lucky in the draw.
There are several raffle phases. Anyone who orders at an early stage, has a better chance of being allocated cards in later draws. However, a pig in a poke is basically bought, because the draw for the group phase of the tournament, which will be held in ten cities from June 14th to July 14th, will not take place until December 2nd in the Elbphilharmonie in Hamburg. Even then, only 21 of 24 participants will be confirmed, as three teams will qualify via playoffs in spring 2024.
Only German games scheduled so far
All that is known so far is that hosts Germany will play the opening game in Munich on June 14th. The other group games for the DFB selection will be played on June 19th in Stuttgart and on June 23rd in Frankfurt am Main.
The cheapest tickets for the opening game will cost 50 euros. The organizers call the category “Fans First”. In all stadiums these are seats in the lower tier behind both goals. According to UEFA, of the total 2.7 million tickets, 380,000 will be available in the cheapest category. However, not all of them get into the pot for which everyone can apply. Only 1.2 million tickets end up there. Another million cards will be raffled off by the participating national associations, and half a million cards will go to sponsors and the so-called “UEFA Family,” among others.
| category | Opening game | Group stage |
|---|---|---|
4 | 50 | 30 |
3 | 195 | 60 |
2 | 400 | 150 |
1 | 600 | 200 |
In their PR brochure, the organizer writes that a million tickets are available for 60 euros or less. Conversely, this means that 1.7 million cards cost more than 60 euros, and for the opening game (category 3 cards are already 195 euros) there are only a few cheap ones available. The same applies from the knockout phase onwards. A ticket in the best category for the final costs 1,000 euros; an average ticket for the entire tournament costs a good 110 euros.
| category | Round of 16 | Quarterfinals | Semifinals | final |
|---|---|---|---|---|
4 | 50 | 60 | 80 | 95 |
3 | 85 | 100 | 195 | 300 |
2 | 175 | 200 | 400 | 600 |
1 | 250 | 300 | 600 | 1,000 |
Compared to previous European Championships, tickets have become significantly more expensive. However, a comparison is difficult because the categories are divided differently and inflation also has an impact.
The price of a ticket includes travel on local public transport nationwide from 6 a.m. on the match day to 6 p.m. the following day. In Germany and more than 30 countries in Europe, long-distance train tickets are also available at prices around 30 euros. Details will be announced at a later date.