Plans to curb fake tickets at beer cup event

Verification point to be set up at stadium for fans

Stadium Management SA (SMSA) managing director Bertie Grobbelaar has promised that ticketing glitches that rocked the recent Soweto derby between Orlando Pirates and Kaizer Chiefs won’t be repeated in Saturday’s Carling Black Label Cup.

Speaking on the sidelines of the Carling Cup state of readiness media conference at FNB Stadium yesterday, Grobbelaar detailed how they had ticketing problems when Pirates hosted bitter rivals Chiefs at the same venue two weeks ago.

The SMSA boss vowed they’ll make sure the ticketing system is flawless on Saturday, when FNB Stadium hosts the one-day, four-team competition.

“We had around 7,500 tickets that weren’t scanned. Now we’ll make sure if your ticket doesn’t scan you’ll be referred to a verification point where they check whether that ticket has already been scanned, so it might be that that ticket is already inside or it’s a fake ticket. We can promise that what happened during the Soweto derby won’t repeat on Saturday,” Grobbelaar said.

“There was also something wrong with the printing of the barcode but we picked that up at the verification point, so if that happens you get issued a new ticket. It would be wrong of me to say there were 7,500 fake tickets but there were 7,500 ticket failures and of that percentage definitely a large portion was fake tickets.”

Grobbelaar also confirmed they had sold 52,000 tickets by yesterday. The first game is scheduled for 9.30am where Mamelodi Sundowns will take on AmaZulu, while Pirates and Chiefs will clash in the second match at 12pm. The losers of these games will square-off in a third/fourth place play-off penalty shootout at 3.30pm, while the final is at 5pm.

As confident as he is that the ticket will be sold out by Thursday, Grobbelaar

has attributed a somewhat slow sale to the recent Soweto derby and last Saturday’s MTN8 final that Pirates clinched at the expense of AmaZulu in Durban.

“I am positive the Carling Cup will be a sold out affair. I feel the tickets will be finished by Thursday. People recently bought tickets for the Soweto derby and there was a final in Durban, so it’s expected that the Carling Cup tickets don’t sell as quickly as they normally do,” Grobbelaar noted.

SYDNEY SESHIBEDI /GALLO IMAGES Stadium Management SA chief Bertie Grobbelaar, Ronnie Schloss of the PSL, Carling’s Arne Rust, Brenda Tshabalala of Top6 Taxis and Gautrain’s Sandy Roth were among guest speakers at the press conference to update the nation about Saturday’s event at FNB Stadium.