More than 3.7 million tickets have been sold for the 2006 World Cup in Germany. It is easy to imagine the great potential of ticket forgeries and black market for this "one of the most coveted sports events on the planet".

As a result, FIFA and Germany have chosen Philips, a major world player in smart-card technology, to tag every single ticket for the 2006 World Cup with a RFID chip. The tickets also have added logistics value. They can be used to expedite the parking, use of lockers, access to public transportation and even for the purchase, since personal information and banking information have already been stored in the tickets. Each RFID chip costs 10 eurocent therefore the World Cup organisers are paying an extra bill of more than € 370,000. However, Philips hopes that after the World Cup RFID ticketing will be more widely accepted and the price may drop.

Again, the large scale application of RFID technology has raised concerns of possible abuse for surveillance.