20.06.2015 11:59 h

Massive ticket demand for Euro 2016

Ticket requests for next year's European Championships in France have reached 3.7 million, organisers said Saturday.

It means the ticket requests are already oversubscribed by almost four times, despite having only been open for a month.

"Yesterday (Friday) we were at 3.7 million requests for one million tickets, so it's a much bigger demand than the offer," said Jacques Lambert, president of the Euro 2016 tournament's organising committee.

Lambert said most requests had been for the cheapest tickets and that fans could increase their chances of getting tickets by applying for more expensive ones.

Requests have come mostly from France (55 percent) but also a lot from around Europe and 200 countries in total.

The first phase of the ticket sale is open until July 10 and requests can only be made on the euro2016.fr website.

In total 2.5 million tickets will be sold for the 51 matches in the new expanded 24-team tournament.

While many of those tickets are reserved for sponsors, partners and the like, 1.8 million tickets in total will go to the general public.

Each individual can apply for up to four tickets.