Super disappointment for badminton fans

ON Sunday April 9, my husband joined the queue at Stadium Perpaduan in Kuching to buy tickets for the final of the Celcom Axiata Malaysia Open 2017 championship.

Limited tickets were to start selling at 11am and each person would be allowed to buy two, as stipulated on the ticket sale website.

He joined the queue of a few dozen early birds at 6am to buy at-the-door tickets for both the quarter-finals and semi-finals.

At that time, he was confident of getting the tickets based on the first-come, first-served basis that had been the practice in the days before.

As the hours ticked by, my husband noticed more people turning up and hovering around the entrance to the ticket counter. By 9am, there was a swarm of people who had obviously not joined the queue.

He also heard people calling their friends and family on their phones to join them, which they did. Naturally, this affected the order of the queue that had been formed much earlier.

When the officials arrived at 11am to set up a queue tape, the line was chaotic and almost nonexistent. In the end, hundreds of queue-cutters got to buy tickets instead of those, including my husband, who were courteous enough to wait for hours in the humidity and heat.

My husband alerted a security person on duty about the wrong-doing but the guy just shrugged his shoulder.

As a Malaysian, I am well aware of the notorious culture of queue-cutting in this country. However, I felt this was an unacceptable customer experience for something as world-renowned as the World Super Series Premier event, especially with Malaysia being one of only five countries to host this event.

Another is Denmark, my husband’s home country. He said this would never happen at the Copenhagen tournament.

He has told his family and friends about his experience here, and they are flabbergasted at the inconsistency of standards in security and crowd management.

To emphasise this point, as we left the stadium, we saw holders of tickets still stuck in the queue outside the building booing because they were hearing announcements of the start of the first match.

My husband and I are not upset for ourselves but for the others who missed out on their chance to watch the competition because of queue-cutting.

My husband was with children who waited for hours with their parents. How upset would they feel missing out on this once-in-alifetime chance to watch their heroes? What example are we setting for them? It seems like we are allowing bad manners to be seen as okay or normal.

I read the report “Setting an international stage” ( The Star, March 3) which stated that the “Badminton Association of Malaysia and Badminton World Federation are working closely with the Sarawak Badminton Association, Sarawak State Sports Council and state government to make sure the event goes smoothly.” But clearly, monitoring of the ticket-buying process on the days stated was not taken into serious consideration.

Surely, knowing that two of the biggest names in badminton, Lee Chong Wei and Lin Dan, were competing in the event, the organisers would have put in place stronger enforcement and protocols both in and outside the stadium, and responded in a more timely and intuitive manner with crowd management?

I feel it was not the public’s fault for being rowdy. After all, it was the responsibility of the organisers to create an environment where rules must be followed.

If we are genuinely striving for Malaysia to be seen as a credible host for such prestigious international events, local organisers must use more foresight in the planning stage to avoid such embarrassing situations in the future. DAVINA GOH Petaling Jaya