Despite it being in one of the smaller centres, the FIFA Fan Fest in Port Elizabeth has attracted the third most visitors during the first two weeks of the World Cup.
"After the second week, we ranked third in the country based on attendance," said local Fan Fest director Glenn van Eck. By last Friday evening 150 000 people had passed through the turnstiles at St George's Park.
Of the 10 official sites countrywide - one for each Host City - only those in Durban and Cape Town had outperformed the one in PE.
According to FIFA totals, the parks in Sandton and Soweto ranked fourth and fifth respectively.
While Cape Town naturally had a bigger pool to draw from, Durban's mild winter weather had attracted a large proportion of the international visitors, according to Van Eck.
The Fan Fest concept originated in Korea in 2002 and was expanded on in Germany four years later to what we currently have in South Africa. "The idea is to give people an opportunity to view the games when the stadium is full."
Bafana Bafana's games were the best attended with just over 16 000 people watching their opening effort against Mexico, 10 500 the match against Uruguay and 13 000 their victory over France. - BuaNews
