Ticket holding fans turned away
Kabelo Boranabi | Friday July 14, 2017 17:07
As hundreds of fans thronged the UB Indoor Sports Centre to cheer their team in the crucial tie against Jamaica on Tuesday, some were turned away. Many were left disappointed as they missed action after they were told the arena was full. This led to suspicion that the organisers had over sold tickets. “We bought the tickets at the gate, but we were not allowed inside.
The security told us the place was full, but we had the tickets. We missed most parts of the game as we were allowed in at the start of the fourth quarter,” said a disappointed fan after Dinaletsana’s win against Jamaica said. Local Organising Committee (LOC) chairperson, Prisca Mokgadi told Mmegi Sport that the tickets were printed according to the venue’s capacity, but said people wanted to ‘sneak’ in, which caused problems.
“We are in control of the ticket printing and we have not oversold the tickets. Our security personnel discovered that some used accreditation tags to sneak others in. We are a work force of many people. You may find out that when some are off duty, they resort to watching the game hence take seats reserved for the fans. There are a lot of reasons that led to this situation, but I can assure you we did not oversell the tickets,” she said.
Mokgadi further said the fans arrived late for the games thus making it difficult for the security personnel to control the traffic leading to some people finding loopholes to sneak into the games. She also said prior to the games, the LOC thought of setting up fan parks as the two playing venues cannot accommodate large numbers, but the process was costly as the LOC was working on a tight budget. “We tried to setup fan parks. We had identified BONA courts as our fan park, but we tried to sell the idea to agencies so that they manage the parks. However, they asked for a lot of money.
It was too costly; we were working on a minimal budget,” she said. Dinaletsana will now use the Ditshupo Hall to battle for a respectable finish; the venue can only accommodate around 500 fans as compared to the UB Indoor Sports Centre that has a seating capacity of 2,000. Mokgadi said the LOC is working around the clock to come up with alternatives for fans that cannot make it into the venue. However, nothing had materialised at press time.