A mad scramble for tickets to this summer's World Cup soccer championship opened Wednesday across Europe with millions of desperate fans jamming telephone lines for hours.

France, which is hosting the quadrennial event, put 110,000 tickets on sale at 8 a.m. by telephone only, triggering the the continent's worst phone congestion in recent memory.

The French organizing committee announced shortly after 8 p.m., the close of the first day's ticket sale, that 20 million people across Europe had made calls and 15,000 tickets were sold.

In the Netherlands, two million people tried to get through to reserve tickets, the Dutch phone company said, and fans from 17 other countries were trying to connect at the same time.

"Your call cannot get through because of an excessive number of calls," a recording told fans. "Please call later."

Tens of thousands kept pushing redial buttons.

Adding to the difficulties, French organizers made only one number available for all of Europe instead of a special number for each country.

The French organizing committee tried to play down the problem. "There is a rush. We are a bit swamped," a spokesman said. "Some people are complaining, but we hope it will calm down later."

The tickets, sold on a first-come, first-served basis, are theoretically available until May 2, but the chaotic rush at the outset was inevitable, given the shortage of seats and the fact that several of France's neighbors — Germany, Italy, Britain, Spain and the Netherlands — qualified for the competition.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, addressing the French National Assembly earlier this month, said he would return to Paris in June for the World Cup "if I can get tickets." His intended joke fell flat as French officials have long been under severe criticism for hogging 60% of the tickets for French fans.

Only 20% of the 2.5 million tickets will go to foreign soccer federations for distribution to their supporters. Tour operators and corporations creamed off more tickets. The rest — first- and second-round matches only — went to Wednesday's callers.

Isabelle Delaye, who heads World Cup ticketing, says the French organizers respected guidelines laid down by soccer's world governing body, FIFA, and was as generous as possible to foreign fans.

"We offered more tickets for foreigners than we were obliged to," she said. "We've done the best we could under difficult circumstances."

Delaye said only 15% of tickets were reserved for foreign federations at the last World Cup in the United States in 1994. But U.S. stadiums averaged 70,000 seats against 46,000 in France, meaning U.S. organizers had more than a million additional tickets to hand out.

Thirty-two qualifying nations, up from 24 in 1994, will play 64 matches in 10 French cities. The month-long competition culminates July 12 in the final at the new $450 million Stade de France outside Paris.

French taxpayers footed much of the bill for the stadium and rail transportation to it, one reason they were favored in the ticket distribution.

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