Never have so many fans wanted to be at a European Championship

In Decemer 2019, fans of teams already qualified requested almost three times as many tickets to this summer's European Championships across the continent in December 2019 as they did to the European Championships four years ago. The cheapest ticket is €30 and the most expensive €125 for group matches.

The 60th-anniversary tournament is being organised by UEFA in 12 cities including Budapest. In the first phase of ticket sales, it was not yet known which teams would be a part of the EURO but later, fans whose nations had qualified for the tournament, could buy from the remaining allocation.

Sixty-four percent of the tickets sold were bought by fans in the host countries, meaning many Hungarian fans already have a ticket for those matches in Hungary - in line with UEFA's goal of bringing football closer to the people. In the Puskás Arena, three group matches and a 2nd-round fixture will take place. The current world champions, France, and European champions, Portugal, will take on each other in one of those games - 40% of the tickets sold in Hungary were purchased for this contest - 20.5% were bought by French fans and almost 10% by their Portuguese counterparts.

A majority of Hungarian fans were successful in applying for the match between Portugal and the team which will qualify for this group from March's play-off process, which still could be Hungary - 57.1% of the tickets sold for this match have gone to Hungarian fans. Forty-six percent of the fans at the match between the group's play-off entrant and France will be Hungarian, as will 50.5% of the fans at the round-of-16 knockout fixture, a match which was also in demand in England; 7.3% of tickets went to English spectators. During the December 2019 sales stage, a total of 420,000 applications were made, with the most popular being the Portugal-France match, for which currently 40.1% of ticket holders are Hungarian.

Naturally, there is huge interest in the final, 714,000 tickets being received, which is number almost eight times the capacity of its venue, Wembley. A similar number of fans - 710,000 - want to visit the Germany-France group match in Munich.

The 'Follow my team' format of ticket has also sold out. These will allow fans to follow their favourite team at every group match and for as long as they remain in the tournament in the knockout stages, regardless of location. If the team does not qualify from their group, ticket purchased for knockout matches will be fully refunded.

Fans whose country will only qualify via the play-offs in March - a group which could include the Hungarian community if their nation win their two play-off matches - will be able to claim their remaining tickets in April. They will be sold on a 'first come, first served' basis by UEFA - not in a lottery, as they were in previous stages of the sales process.

Available tickets can be exchanged, sold and purchased exclusively via UEFA from the end of February. On the reselling platform, fans who do not want to visit a particular match may offer their tickets for sale at the original price. This process will, of course, change the proportion of ticket holders by country that we are currently familiar with.