Rugby World Cup 2015: Definitive Guide to Buying Tickets

Tom SunderlandSep 17, 2014

The 12-month countdown to the 2015 Rugby World Cup has kicked off, and fans from all over the globe now begin their scramble to be among those in attendance in England next year.

The biggest event in rugby makes its way back to European shores after New Zealand won as hosts in 2011, promising to make the 2015 edition a spectacle bigger than any of its kind ever witnessed.

Three years ago almost 1.5 million people attended 2011 Rugby World Cup matches, and four years prior to that, France welcomed a record total attendance of more than 2.2 million to their competition, an average of 47,150 per game.

England will look to break those barriers when their time arrives, but to be in with a chance of figuring among the rugby hordes, you'll need to know precisely how to get your hands on a ticket.

1. General Sale

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Tickets for the 2015 Rugby World Cup were made available for general sale application on September 12, a window that will remain open until 6 p.m. BST/1 p.m. ET on September 29.

Via the tournament's official ticketing website, fans can apply for any ticket variety in any of the 48 matches, with successful applicants to be informed of their status in October.

Because these tickets are not sold on a first-come-first-served basis, there's no need to rush in registering your interest before the Sept. 29 deadline.

The "Match Manager" tool allows an applicant to cap their spending by specifying a limit to the amount of matches they can be allocated.

A "traffic light" system also shows which matches are most popular at any time, giving applicants an idea of their chances at landing a ticket for any one fixture.

In May of this year, 500,000 tickets were made available to the English club network and wider rugby community with the aim of rewarding the nation's most loyal support and giving an advance chance to get hold of tickets.

2. Ballot System

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Oversubscribed matches from the general sale will be subject to a ballot system in order to ensure the fairest sale of tickets.

Should demand exceed supply for any match or particular price category, the ballot format will allocate tickets randomly.

However, the ballot will not be necessary for all matches, as Wales in particular is finding out. Sion Morgan of Wales Online reports that "18 games (total) are unlikely to be balloted," seven of which will be played at the Millennium Stadium, two of those being Wales fixtures.

The ballot system also helps prevent fraudsters from monopolising the market, purchasing tickets en masse with a view to then selling them on for a profit.

3. Real-Time Sale

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Any tickets left over from the first wave of sales and ballot will be processed back into the system in November, which is when the first-come-first-served phase begins.

Fans will be able to see which matches and price categories remain available, likely to be made up mainly of the lower-profile fixtures comprising of sides outside Tier 1.

It isn't illegal for tickets to be re-sold on secondary sites or through touting, but any entrants found to have obtained their ticket through such means can be denied entry to any game.