Another round of ticket sales for the 2004 IIHF World Championship is to begin via the terminals of SAZKA joint-stock company at 5 p.m. on Monday, January 26th, 2004. The sales get under way in the afternoon to give a chance to people with regular working hours to come to the terminals and buy their tickets. In the following days, each particular outlet will adjust its ticket sales in keeping with its regular working hours.

All in all, there are more than 7 000 terminals in the Czech Republic, situated in hypermarkets and supermarkets, at petrol stations, in Czech Post branches, tobacconists´ and newsagents´ shops and in other outlets where SAZKA, a.s. coupons are taken. The personnel of the SAZKA terminals will have at their disposal a list of packages with their serial and identification numbers and the individual matches, complete with a plan of the sectors in both arenas, i.e. Prague’s SAZKA ARENA and the ČEZ ARENA at Vítkovice.

Customers will just give the personnel of the SAZKA terminals the number of their required package, possibly adding the identification number of the fixture or selected match plus their required price category. Following their specific requirements, customers will receive a printed draft ticket (a terminal booking certificate), giving the number of the relevant package, matches, price, sector, row and specific seat. Draft tickets are valid for the next 20 minutes. Customers who find their draft tickets satisfactory will return their certificates to the personnel of the terminal together with required cash, after which the personnel will print out ticket proper. If the customer is not satisfied with the document, the booking will be canceled and that particular seat will be released for further sale. The central ticketing system will receive orders in the same sequence in which they are placed at the terminals, offering customers the most suitable vacant seats in their required price category.

The sales of tickets at SAZKA, a.s., terminals are governed by the same rules as those applied to the sale on the Internet, which was terminated on January 11, 2004. Tickets will be sold in packages, each package containing tickets for 2 matches played on the same day. The only exception to this rule will be tickets for the games to be played in the relegation group, which will be sold individually. In an effort to prevent speculative ticket buying, the overall number of packages will be limited so that each customer is entitled to buy a maximum of 5 packages for a single match. As in the case of Internet ticket sales, the price of a package will be in the range from 330 to 880 CZK for basic group matches, ranging from 490 to 1,100 CZK for matches in the qualification groups, from 130 to 270 CZK for tickets for games in the relegation group, from 1,600 to 2,900 CZK for the quarterfinals, from 1,700 to 3,300 for the semifinals, while a package for the finals and the bronze medal tie will cost from 3,300 to 6,500 CZK.

All the information on the individual packages, which will be available at the SAZKA terminals starting on January 26, 2004, will be published before the start of the sales on the Czech Television’s teletext and on the following Internet pages: www.sazkaticket.cz and www.sazka.cz.

Foreign customers may begin booking their tickets at 5 p.m. on Monday, January 26, 2004 via the Call Center (Tel. No. + 420 266 121 122) that will operate on workdays from 8 a.m. to 11 a.m. Central European Time.

Judging by the experience from the 2003 IIHF World Championship in Finland, we expect the most attractive packages, i.e. in this particular case matches in the basic groups where the Czech and Slovak national teams will be playing, some qualification group games, the semifinals, finals and the bronze medal tie, to be sold out in a very short time indeed. Those who will not succeed in buying their tickets now will get another chance in the middle of March when the remaining tickets blocked until then for technical reasons and due to mandatory bookings will be released.

An interesting opportunity to obtain tickets for the 2004 IIHF World Championship is long-term rental of club seats and skyboxes in the closed sectors of the SAZKA ARENA. In addition to other advantages, customers who buy club seats and skyboxes will be offered preferential purchase of tickets for all World Ice Hockey Championship matches just as for any other events to be held in SAZKA ARENA in the future.