EURO 2012 ticket lottery completes selection

For the past four days a super computer at UEFA headquarters in Nyon has been picking through the 12,149,425 UEFA EURO 2012 ticket requests received during March to decide, at random, who receives them.

There may still be just over 400 days to go before UEFA EURO 2012 kicks off, but enthusiasm for the continent's greatest festival of football is already sky-high. Ticket sales for the event, which runs from 8 June 2012 to 1 July 2012, took place last month and an average of 400,000 a day were requested – an unprecedented number.

With applications from no fewer than 206 countries worldwide, the demand for the various types of ticket available for UEFA EURO 2012 exceeded supply for all matches of the final tournament. So since Tuesday morning a computer in Nyon has been conducting a lottery, assigning tickets at random – it finished its task today.

It was no ordinary task; and no ordinary workstation either. With 25 times the processing power of a standard home personal computer and 50 times the memory, it has 24 core central processing units each boasting 2.67 GHz and 896 GB of RAM. Its labours have been monitored all the way by a notary.

Applicants will discover before the end of this month whether they have been successful, via email.

Please read this warning issued over payments.