SMSA gives itself a pass for new ticket system

Stadium Management SA (SMSA) boss Bertie Grobbelaar has revealed how it bucked fraudulent ticketing operations on Sunday when Orlando Pirates beat Mamelodi Sundowns at FNB Stadium.

SMSA ditched Ticketpro for Open Tickets after uncovering alarming fraudulent ticketing activities at the Soweto derby at the stadium last month. The venue ended up accommodating over 100,000 fans when only 87,000 tickets had been sold.

SMSA later revealed that some fans had used fake tickets while others had bribed security personnel to gain entrance.

The Pirates-Downs fixture was the third – and biggest – game at the stadium to use the Open Tickets system since it was introduced.

“This game was a 100% improvement from the derby,” Grobbelaar told Sowetan on Monday. “What contributed to that? The elimination of the till slip tickets is the first point. We had about 20,000 fake till slip tickets in the last derby. Over 40% of tickets [for Sunday’s game] were purchased online and the rest [were] bought at outlets.

“We had a double-scanning system at the scanning points, [and] if your ticket did not scan as a valid ticket, they referred you to verification points.

“It also helped that the stadium concluded a Wi-Fi activity agreement with Telkom and we extended that broadband connectivity to the scanning points. Normally we only had SAPS [the SA Police Service] at the second scanning point, but on Sunday they were at the first point and that also made a difference.”

Sundowns fan Pathu Ramabulana, 37, from Soshanguve, lauded the new ticketing system.

“I bought my ticket at Shoprite in the [Joburg] CBD,” he said. “I wish this system could also work at stadiums like Lucas Moripe because sometimes there they don’t scan or they scan [only] once ... here my ticket was double scanned.”

As much as there was no ticketing drama, chaos ensued in the stands when the announcer told fans sitting in the far stand – which is usually for the visiting team's supporters – to split from the centre line.

Grobbelaar said: “Tickets are unreserved ... there’s no stadium in SA where you purchase a ticket and sit on a [reserved] seat. It [the seating announcement] was just a club’s management of [its] supporters.”

As to why Sundowns could not use the main change room, he said: “We’ve got a contractual agreement with Chiefs on their change room. They’re the home tenant team and we renovated their change room into a state-of-the-art [facility], so that’s why it wasn’t used.”

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