Heart of Midlothian are closing in on the 18,000 mark for tickets sold for the upcoming Scottish Cup semi-final with Rangers.

The teams will meet at Hampden Park on Sunday with a place in May's final up for grabs.

Hearts were given a split allocation of 21,000 after club representatives put forward "an extremely strong case" to the Scottish FA when the clubs met last month to discuss the ticket situation.

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The agreement came with the understanding that the club would have to cover the cost of all unsold tickets. As things stand, just over 3,000 tickets remain for sale with the club having sold 17,800.

The club's charity arm Big Hearts is currently running a fundraiser to give supporters who normally wouldn't have a chance to attend the opportunity to do so. More than £17,000 has been raised in the last 36 hours.

As things stand, supporters with five or more loyalty points can buy tickets. It is understood the club won't be lowering the loyalty points threshold to ensure non-Hearts fans don't purchase tickets.

The club's chief executive Andrew McKinlay recently stressed the importance of selling out the Hearts end after the club fought for an even split and the impact it could have in future.

"Yes, there will be a cost to us if we don't do that, that's been talked about," he told HeartsTV. "But more importantly for me is that if we don't do that in the future we may struggle to get half the stadium. So it's really important we do that so we get half the stadium. 

"I know people are struggling financially at the moment and I know there are a lot of calls on money so I would just ask if people are able to, to come or bring people with them so we can absolutely sell out our end at Hampden a week on Sunday."