While the idea of hosting a European Championships across a number of different countries has a few pitfalls, it should make the games far more accessible to football fans. 12 cities will host matches, some of which will welcome a major tournament for the first time.
Dublin is amongst that group. Four games will take place in the Irish capital, with three group games and a last 16 clash coming to the city in June. If Ireland qualify, they will take on Poland and Sweden on June 15th and 19th respectively.
Considering the amount of cities the tournament will be spread across, it is not surprising that more people applied for tickets than in any previous edition.
UEFA have announced that they received over 28million ticket applications, almost doubling the number received for Euro 2016 in France. With only 2.5million tickets available for purchase there were a lot of disappointed football fans.
Unsurprisingly, the Euro 2020 final at Wembley received the most applications at 714,000, while the meeting of Germany and France in Berlin came in a close second with 710,000 ticket requests.
The application process was split into two parts, with the first set of tickets distributed in August of last year. Over 19million applications were received during this period, most of which came from residents of host countries.
Around 9million ticket requests came during the second window in December, which allowed supporters of qualified countries to apply for tickets to their nation's games.
Ireland will be hoping to join the list of the 20 already qualified countries during the play-offs next month, where Slovakia and Northern Ireland/Bosnia will stand in their way. They will likely be without James McClean for those fixtures, who suffered a knee injury whilst playing for Stoke City in midweek.
