Smog doesn’t lift but Delhi plays host nonetheless

thanks to the rain in the morning. It had looked slightly worrying in the afternoon,” said Rajat Sharma, before the match began.

Fans then began to trickle in. Though some stands were empty when the first ball was bowled, the stands for lower denomination tickets began to fill before the powerplay overs were completed. DDCA officials had expected the fans to turn up. But what the pollution spoiled was revenues that would have come from the sale of high-end tickets.

REVENUE HIT

A top DDCA official said around 3.30 pm, “We had a few people asking for refund but we could not give as it is not our policy.

“Most of our revenues suffered due to a lack of sales of high-end tickets. The low denomination tickets were mostly sold out. But the corporate boxes, marquee section and the bay area (all prime areas) were not. We suspect it was because of the pollution levels over the past few days. We expected about ~3.5 crore in tickets sales but couldn’t sell even ~1.25 crore worth of tickets… It is the rich who kept away.”

The official confirmed that match day did not see the sale of a single ticket and that less than 50% of the tickets in the three prime sections were sold. The top-tier tickets in those sections were priced at ~10,000 and ~12,500.

Many tickets in corporate boxes were given as complimentary. There are fewer than 3000 top-tier seats, but they are the ones that bring the chunk of the revenue from tickets.

Delhi got the match at this time of the year when the Capital struggles due to pollution, because of BCCI’S rotation policy. The reason, according to Board officials, is that December-january would be too foggy in Delhi and no India games are scheduled for February-march.

The cricket officials would also have heaved a sigh of relief that no player showed signs of unease or breathlessness in the game, which Bangladesh won by seven wickets.