Rugby League World Cup 2013 celebrated the one year to go to the tournament mark by releasing tickets for general sale today Friday October 26 2012.

RLWC2013 also hosted a spectacular international press conference with players from all 14 competing nations, many via webcams on a Google+ Hangout, which can be viewed by the weblink at the bottom of this article.

TicketMaster the RLWC2013 official ticketing partner reported that demand exceeded their expectations and that even though more staff were on duty than usual still more had to be drafted in.

They also reported that extra bandwidth was allocated today after the e-ticket sales site crashed yesterday with the amount of pre-sales enquiries.

By the end of normal office hours on the first day of sales 50,000 tickets had been sold with the biggest interest in the ‘big three’ games: the opening double-header, the semi-finals and the Rugby League World Cup Final.

Sales for the final are outselling all the games by at least 5:1 so fans who want to be at the final really need to buy sooner rather than later.

RLWC2013 Tournament General Manager, Sally Bolton said: “We’ve had a great day celebrating the year to go mark. We staged a ground-breaking press conference with one of the biggest Google+ Hangouts any sport in the UK has ever done.

We’ve also had amazing news about our ticket sales and with an eye on social media and what TicketMaster are indicating I’d say there’s more to come. So I’d genuinely urge fans to get their tickets as soon as they can”.