Baku, March 15, AZERTAC

A total of 356,700 tickets for matches of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Russia were sold in one day since the resumption of ticket sales for the much-anticipated global football event, FIFA announced in its statement, according to TASS.

The second period of Phase 2 of ticket sales, dubbed as the ‘First-come, first served,’ opened on March 13 at 12:00 Moscow time (9:00 am GMT) to provide sales services until its closure on April 3.

According to FIFA’s statement, "356,700 tickets have been allocated to fans around the world… in the first 24 hours of the first come, first served sales window, which started on 13 March at 12:00 Moscow time."

"Most of the tickets have been allocated to Russian fans (197,036), followed by fans from USA (14,845), Argentina (14,564), Colombia (13,994), Mexico (13,505), Brazil (9,691), Peru (9,493), Australia (5,500), Germany (5,476), China (5,459) and India (4,166) - the top ten countries from abroad," according to the FIFA.

All tickets are available for purchase on the official FIFA website, but technical problems were reported on Tuesday by football fans from around the globe as they tried to access the service and buy the much-coveted tickets.

"Despite the huge demand and the potential waiting time to access the website, FIFA encourages all fans to visit our website and check the traffic light system, which gives an indication about ticket availability," the statement reads.

The Phase 2 of ticket sales for the quadrennial world football championship was divided into two periods, just like during the preceding Phase 1.

The FIFA announced in its statement on Monday that an aggregate sum of 1,303,616 tickets had been already allocated after both periods of Phase 1 and the first period of Phase 2. Given the number of requests was more than the number of available tickets, they had been allocated by a random selection draw process.

Phase 3, dubbed as the "Last Minute Sales," will run from April 18 up until the final match day of the competition and the remaining tickets will be available for purchase on a first-come first-serve basis.

Ticket prices for FIFA Confederations and World Cup tournaments are usually divided into three categories and the global football organization visas the price for each category. A special fourth category, which is the cheapest compared to the others, was especially introduced by FIFA in July 2016 and was reserved only for residents of the hosting country.

Russia selected 11 host cities to be the venues for the matches of the 2018 World Cup and they are Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, Kazan, Saransk, Kaliningrad, Volgograd, Rostov-on-Don, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg and Samara.

The matches of the 2018 World Cup will be held between June 14 and July 15 at 12 stadiums located in the 11 mentioned above cities across Russia. Two of the stadiums are located in the Russian capital.