For Hyderabad cricket fans, the joy of the city hosting the May 12 Indian Premier League Final match has been shortlived.

Cricket fans have been left a disappointed lot, because of the sloppy management of ticket sales. Within two minutes of tickets going on sale on Tuesday, every thing was sold out for the Sunday final at the Rajiv Gandhi Stadium.

The ticket sale was handed over to a private firm, Events Now, and an announcement was made through an online flyer, saying ‘Tickets will go live today (Tuesday) at 2 pm’. When ticket buyers logged in, they could only see a ‘sold out’ message. The stadium has capacity to host 39,000 spectators and the break up of how the seats are apportioned has been kept under wraps.

According to those in the know, about 4,000 tickets are meant for the Hyderabad Cricket Association (HCA) and other teams, and about 5,000 tickets are set aside for various services providers to the stadium. The rest are for sale to general public.

Ad revenue, a priority

But there is no firm information on who got what or how many, as no one wants to share the actual numbers. This is not the first time this has happened. In the past IPL seasons and recent India-Australia clash, too, ticket-sale had become an issue. “The stadium makes huge money from advertisements and sponsors, and ticket-sale accounts for a mere fraction of the collection,” said an HCA official, requesting anonymity.

 

Swaroop, who never misses a match, lamented the way the ticket-sale was handled. “I logged onto the site, and after navigating the usual terms and conditions, when I tried to buy the tickets, I was aghast to learn that all tickets — ₹1,500, ₹2,000, ₹2,500 and ₹5,000 — were sold out within minutes,” he said. “Then I also tried to see if I could get tickets for other matches at Vizag — the eliminator and qualifiers are being held in the port city. While the site showed tickets were available, I could not complete the purchase,” he said. He is among thousands of cricket fans who are disappointed that though Hyderabad is getting to host the Final fortuitously — as the Tamil Nadu Cricket Association failed to persuade the State government to open three stands with 12,000 seats at the Chennai stadium — they would not be able to watch it live. Effort to contact some of the officials concerned were in vain as they have been blocking calls for fear of being pestered for tickets.

And fans expect some of the tickets to surface on the blackmarket in the next two days.

 

 

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