FIFA has confirmed that Israelis may purchase hospitality packages for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022 directly from its central hospitality website even though there is not currently an agent that deals with Israel.
UK Lawyers for Israel had accused FIFA of discriminating against Israelis and breaking its own codes of conduct by not allowing them to purchase hospitality packages via an agent.
FIFA has now responded to UKLFI, explaining that its hospitality packages are organised exclusively by MATCH Hospitality, but an agent could not be found to sell tickets to Israeli customers.
FIFA went on to say that “Crucially not every territory or country in the world has a sales agent appointed, which is the case with Israel. One could not be found for Israel, despite MATCH Hospitality’s best efforts. That is why Israel does not have a country specific contact link on the website under the section where sales agents are listed . Indeed that is also the case for over 100 other territories worldwide.”
Winterhill Hospitality, which is based in Hong Kong and lists “Palestine” as one of its territories, was appointed to represent MATCH Hospitality in all territories in the Asian Football Confederation and Oceania Football Confederation Regions.
However Israel falls under the UEFA confederation, and sales distribution rights for this region are awarded on a country by country basis by MATCH Hospitality.
FIFA admitted that MATCH Hospitality is currently reviewing additional territories to be served by its International Sales office in Spain and Israel will be included as part of this process.
Caroline Turner, director of UKLFI said, “We are pleased that FIFA has clarified that Israelis and Israeli residents are able to buy hospitality packages for the World Cup directly, even though currently no agent has been allocated to them. We hope that the Spanish agent will soon be selling to Israelis.”
