IPL season opener: Desperate fans in Chennai go on ticket hunt to witness CSK vs RCB
Website’s failure, coupled with long queues that only compound their disappointment, has driven fans onto the streets in search of tickets.
CHENNAI: The Chennai Super Kings (CSK) this year announced that all tickets for the home matches will be sold online, following the issues in the past pertaining to black market tickets and to avoid fans waiting in long queues.
But that did not resolve the ticket issue, as fans ended up disappointed after not getting tickets due to technical issues.
The Chepauk stadium has the capacity to hold 38,000 spectators. Meanwhile, more than 2 lakh people joined the online queue to book tickets ahead of the season opener between CSK vs RCB.
Thousands of fans on ‘X’ posted their concerns over not being able to book tickets for the CSK match.
The problem here is not just a technical issue or server traffic, but also the fact that for the limited seats, huge demands have risen over the years, which led to this problem.
While using the digital platform for ticket sales might prove to be good for reducing black tickets being sold in public, it doesn’t stop the scamsters from playing new tricks in various ways to pull the public into buying tickets, which some people do in the eagerness of wanting to see the match live.
In this inaugural match, scamsters put up a fake website portal named book.myshow-premium.net to resemble another official ticketing portal, bookmyshow.com. It had all the requisites of an official ticket website but had incorrect information about the price range and stands in the stadium.
But the fans are not happy with the way in which the sale of tickets happened. Though Paytm, the official ticketing partner for CSK, apologised for the glitches that happened due to high traffic on the website, many people who waited the whole day in an online queue slammed the website and the management for lack of preparedness.
The 38,000 tickets will not entirely be sold to the fans online. After a lot of filtering through various names, the tickets are distributed to BCCI, TNCA, sponsors, local league teams, government departments, etc.
After all of this, the remaining tickets will be made available to fans. However, with demand soaring higher than ever, black market prices are skyrocketing. Fans outside the stadium, desperate for tickets, are being persuaded to pay exorbitant prices, often three times the original value of the ticket.
Angered by the situation, some fans have taken to social media to denounce the ticketing system as blatantly unfair.
Although the ticket instructions on the platform mentioned the need for buyers to carry government ID proof, we should wait until we see the strictness of this mandate being applied on match days.
