Police bust Phutego in ticket scandal
Thato Kala | Friday February 21, 2014 15:30
Police raided the Rollers office on Tuesday after a tip-off that Phutego and a Botswana Premier League (BPL) official (name withheld) were conniving to sell extra tickets and share the proceeds. He was found with unaccounted tickets from the Rollers-ECCO City Greens Premier League game played on December 21, 2013.
Information reaching Mmegi Sport is that Rollers requested extra tickets ahead of that game as they anticipated it would attract a bigger crowd since it was their last of the year.
They were given additional tickets by the league. The tickets included 14 booklets and 200 old web tickets that were to be used for cars.
After that game, Setete was reportedly handed the P1,600 from the old web tickets that had been used for vehicles. When paying the league their five percent levy, the money from the old web tickets was not included. The money was also not accounted for anywhere.
The Premier League took the money and kept quiet about it although indications are that they were suspicious. The issue only resurfaced this week culminating in the police investigations.
On Tuesday, when police officers invaded the Rollers office as part of their investigations, they found the ticket stubs and the old web tickets in Setete’s drawer. Police confirmed investigations were presently going on, but would not give much detail. BPL chief executive officer Bennet Mamelodi confirmed the matter had been brought to his attention and said they were looking at it holistically to see if it was an isolated case or something national. “At this stage it is still an internal matter and we are co-operating with security agents in dealing with it. We are looking at it to see if this could be a national problem because it is a broad and sensitive matter,” Mamelodi told Mmegi Sport. When contacted for comment, Setete only said: “I am not able to say anything at the moment.” The case comes at a time clubs are crying foul that they are being fleeced thousands of Pula in gate takings owing to fake or old tickets that are in circulation. Suspicions are that fans could be duplicating tickets or, at times, having access to extra tickets.
This week, Santos who print their own tickets, warned there was either a possibility of tickets being duplicated or fans accessing extra tickets, which are usually unaccounted for.
Already there is an anomaly in Santos’ case as they print tickets for themselves for their home games, but BPL continues to print in their behalf. Just last weekend, Santos printed 10 books with 100 leaflets each for their league game against Extension Gunners and the league went on to print 22 books. The club questioned what happened to the remainder of the tickets.
Santos made about P13, 790 from that game in which a ticket was selling at P35. That means 394 people paid to watch the game, while the club had printed 1, 000 tickets. Clubs agreed at last year’s Assembly that they would start printing tickets for themselves, but that is yet to happen.