Russia World Cup Tickets Updates for Budget Travellers
How about grabbing a pint while watching Russian movies in-between Fifa World Cup matches?
I may well be needing a local host for a Russian road trip when the game commences (thank heavens if Airbnb doesn’t end up too costly with increasing demand for tickets). Even if you’re fresh into planning, I’m here to help with some valuable contributions (I have met a group of travellers excited about the Fifa games myself).
My findings? You can lock down your travel and accommodation plans with the right approach to things. You should have learnt one or two basics about visa requirements, reliable phone networks, real borders between host stadiums and getting a visa-less access to the largest nation on earth during the tournament after reading my article.
Pee pee (so the whistle blows)…
Talk about visiting Russia — without a visa?
But with a Fan ID, the official document that’ll be recognised by Russian authorities; you can visit during the Fifa tournament starting 10 days prior to, and ending 10 days after the Grande Finale. You need one to unlock great benefits (both foreign nationals and locals). Without it, you can’t enter Russia without a visa, visit football venues and get free transportation (buses or train) on match days. You can apply for a fan ID after receiving your match ticket confirmation email from Fifa. Fifa apparently uses an arbitrary process to issue these ID’s which might take some months.
If you’re reading now, there’s a fair chance you’ve missed the ticket Sales Phases 1&2 (closing 12:00 Moscow time on 31 January) and you’re in the Random Selection Draw of the latter sales. Going forth, tickets would be issued on a first come, first served basis (commencing 13th March through April 3rd) and confirmed at point of purchase. There’s a chance of random selection draw if tickets requested in Phase 2 exceeds available quota. Fifa would be confirming mid-March when the Random selection draw commences.
Don’t forget you’d hardly find a plain sailing ticket vetting for the senior men’s football tournament. The touristic appeal of Brazil appealed to fans, who didn’t wait to know what city would host national teams before they applied in droves, with a Phase 1 turnout of 80% more four years ago. Fifa will be dealing with backlogs in February with almost 5 million tickets thought to have been requested in the recent sales period. If you still haven’t gotten yours, there’s still time — better still, start processing a Russian Visa or Invite.
You may face transit issues
Share your connections (via what route?) Ticket types point your possible direction. That begins with a trip to Kaliningrad for Super Eagles fans. You’re either in for a short or long trip in Russia if your team isn’t Colombia (covering the shortest possible distance). *You’ll be covering some 5,042km or 5,454km should the 3-time African champions advance into the Round of 16 as group winner or runner-up respectively and you wish to see all their matches.
Flight is the best choice for most travellers. About 32 flights are expected to fly into Kaliningrad on a daily basis (with a match-day estimate of 50–55 max) during the tournament. Covering this distance by train, buses or private cars will be quite difficult because it takes some time to cross some real borders with Russia. Say, for example, going from Moscow to Kaliningrad or vice-versa will — at least — require Lithuanian transit visa (check what you need to cross). Such trip would also see you cross Belarus which apparently wouldn’t be an issue thanks to ongoing talks on a possible Belarus-Russia unified visa.
Free Train
The organising committee plans to make a number of special train services available to World Cup fans visiting host cities for FREE (yes, you read that right). Four of those trains will be available for the all-important final group game between Nigeria and Argentina (schedule not final, see for yourself). There’d also be free buses to match venues. As you’d expect, booking ahead of time is very much important. As mentioned earlier, you’ll need a Fan ID to avail yourself of the free transport opportunity.
The train services are quite a long distance ride but could help you save money. At the same time, a lot of regular trains and plane will operate across major Russian cities.
The search for World Cup accommodation
It’d be nice if more rooms are made available and affordable, because — seriously — prices are driving up demand in most host cities. Others — like the ones in Moscow — are a bit of nightmare to have. Though lots of hotels and hostels will find their way into your search result pages in the months before Russia 2018, it’s certain that availability and prices will continue to be unstable.
Many travellers have a separate account of successful bookings through Fifa, which could be fair or unfair to you (depending on your part of the world). The Fifa partners are expected to release some numbers of rooms on January 31 and mid-April, so check regularly. Booking.com and Airbnb offer several listings at a reasonable price. You’re at the mercy of Russian hoteliers, Fifa and their partner agencies or your travel agency when it comes to accommodation in Russia by June-July. Having a flexible travel schedule will certainly ease your worry.
Two things when making reservations: check the reputation of the property and their reviews. Book the ones with free cancellation for more flexibility with your search (that makes it three). Ask the property owners to confirm your booking in a mail. It’s worth mentioning that not all Fifa hotels are listed on their online portal. If you want to make a booking, email them.
Don’t expect to meet lots of English-speaking fans
You’ve got roughly five months to learn some basic Russian. Don’t expect most of the English-speaking Russians to be fluent. The Google Voice Translate app will solve 90% of your language-related issues.
Fifa group seating regulation
If you’ve been thinking about the possibility of seating with your group or family on match days, Fifa has a caveat for that. Tickets may be grouped for a peculiar seating arrangement provided they are same ticket type (product) in the same ticket category. This means that a group of 12 avid Super Eagles fans could elect to seat as a group if they all have same ticket product, like a Team Specific Ticket (also known as TST) package, which must all be graded under the same category (say the lower terrace CAT1).
Note that sales of the Supporter Tickets (ST) and Conditional Supporter Tickets (CST) commences during the Random Selection Draw of Phase 2. Check Fifa website for more ticket information.
Cell phone Sim and tariff options
It’s important you don’t travel to Russia with a locked phone. Every other travel cellphone-related scenarios have a feasible solution. If you’re planning to buy a Sim card in Russia, this Prepaid Data Sim Card Wiki could come handy.
Most importantly, call and data prices may vary across regions, check with your eventual network. Major carriers use GSM standard radio system but this is not saying CDMA wouldn’t work. A lot of new generation phones (iPhone, Samsung, Nexus) come with both CDMA and GSM standard, so fret over nothing.
MTS (31%), Megafon (30%), Beeline (23%), Tele2 (15%), and others (1%) have the largest cellphone market share in the country. Complications may arise from understanding the T&C’s of your network offers (which most likely won’t be written in English). Ensure you have a good grasp of the important words. Perhaps, they’d be written in Cyrillic.
Russian Beer
This World Cup will give you the chance to have some Baltika (ever heard of that?) If you plan to have some fun, the phrase “Dva piva pozhaluysta” (Russian for “Two beers, please?”) could save the day for you. Seriously speaking, beer would be sold inside the grounds and at the Fan Fest venues across Russia during the showpiece. There could be some concerts and movie lineups too, as museums are expected to be open until 6 AM, there will be night plays and open-air theatre.
Whichever way you plan to enjoy your Russia 2018, be aware that early planning is key as there are contingent bottlenecks you ought to have tackled before April. I’ll be coming back with details of tourist attractions for World Cup travellers in a subsequent post but in the meantime, a clap won’t bruise your palms and comment about this post will help us take the discussion further.
*Google map data was used for distance calculation in this article.
