On Wednesday, a Sputnik correspondent reported difficulty buying a ticket for the FIFA World Cup 2022 in Qatar. The correspondent said that it took hours for the International Federation of Association Football's website to process the application. 

The first queue for buying tickets started at 10:00 GMT on Wednesday, and it will end on February 8. 

Upon the opening of sales online, a pop-up appeared which indicated that the waiting time may be extended due to an excessive number of applications, after which customers are redirected to the processing page. 

The prolonged wait was shown to be extremely slow - buttons repeatedly froze as the system also repeatedly rebooted, even for applications already filled out. 

Fans hoping to attend the World Cup were allowed to apply to 4 categories of tickets through a random draw, including individual matches, team-specific matches, a new FIFA product of ticket series for matches at 4 stadiums for 4 days, and tickets for people with disabilities. 

Each applicant may buy up to 6 tickets for every match, and not more than 60 tickets for the entire tournament. 

The most expensive tickets were the tickets to team matches that involve the Qatari team. The price exceeds $4,700. However, Qatari citizens and inhabitants had the privilege of lower prices and offers, which led them to bulk-buy tickets as soon as the sales started.