World Cup tickets: sell or not to sell?

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The scramble is on... especially this week for football fans, trying to get their hands on tickets for the final World Cup games in South Africa. Paul Crowe has more.

In host cities from Cape Town to Johannesburg a ticket bazaar is in full swing - with touts and scalpers trying to make a profit.

However many ordinary fans are just trying to swap one match for another so they can see their heroes take to the field or catch the next plane home carrying only shattered dreams.

Police and THE World Cup’s governing body FIFA say they are determined to clamp down on the scalpers.

Often it is unclear to police whether fans are trying to profit or simply attempting to get rid of a handful of tickets they no longer require.

Nabeel Birl, football fan said, "We bought these four tickets and we were following Italy, Italy did not make it to the second round and now we got Japan and Paraguay, we don’t follow those teams, so we are just trying to get my money back, we don’t try to make extra money or anything like that, .......

FIFA says football authorities are not targeting individual fans who simply want to sell a ticket they no longer need.

Wolfgang Eichler, FIFA Spokesman said, "...Until today the police had 33 arrests. I think 19 of them are foreigners and they are, it’s really focusing on people who make it their business and those people, the police are targeting, and that’s a crime. But it’s not about a single fan trading a ticket that is not the target group of the police, definitely not."

FIFA says it has put a framework in place in liaison with the South African government to ensure tickets are not sold illegally for vast sums of money.

However, with only eight teams left competing for the biggest prize in football, prices for quarter final tickets are rising on the black market - touts are now quoting twice the face value for the more-sought-after quarter final matches, and that figure is expected to soar for final matches' tickets.

The scramble is on... especially this week for football  fans, trying to get their hands on tickets for the final World Cup games in South Africa. Paul Crowe has more.