A 'taunting' campaign?

If you have been watching the television or going through the papers recently, you would have come across advertisement campaigns for the upcoming ICC World Twenty20 2014, asking you to buy tickets for the event scheduled to begin in March.
While such public campaigns before an international event are no doubt a necessity, they however fail to depict the exact picture, which is that a large portion of the tickets -- which went on sale from November 17 -- were sold within the first two days.
According to the ticketing agency, tickets are available for the six matches in Sylhet and one match in Chittagong. The lack of demand for these matches is mainly because they feature Zimbabwe and the qualifiers.
The campaigns, which continue to remain in the public forum, have in a sense created confusion amongst the many ticket hopefuls. They have also compelled the banks -- responsible for dispatching the tickets -- to question the agency's moves.
It was also criticised by a BCB director. “They should detail out exactly which tickets are available for sale, since a majority of the tickets are already sold out. The advertisement in a way is taunting the supporters,” said the director.
While the tickets were almost gone within the first two days, it was learnt that the ICC had booked advertising slots in various media houses for at least a month.
“I understand the problem, but we can't advertise separately for separate matches. So as long as the tickets in Sylhet and Chittagong are not sold, these campaigns will go on. We will, however, be adopting a different strategy for the practice matches soon,” informed AttraBiT Technologies & Solutions Limited's -- the ICC-appointed ticketing agency -- chief marketing officer Ehsan Sarwar Chowdhury.
According to the ticketing agency, almost 70 per cent of the tickets for the world cup were bought online.