Tickets almost gone after online rush

Tickets for the ICC World Twenty20 next year are close to being sold out just two days after the ICC’s ticketing agencies began selling them. According to the organisers — who expect a complete sell-out by afternoon today — the matches scheduled to take place in Dhaka have already been sold out, while a few tickets remain for games in Chittagong and Sylhet.
This state of affairs has generated considerable discontent as many ticket-hunters who lined up in front of the 97 Moneygram booths — hosted by NCC Bank Limited and Agrani Bank Limited — had to leave empty-handed because of the relatively new phenomenon of online sales claiming the bulk of tickets sold.
Initially there was talk about selling a majority of the tickets through the booths but as it turned out, online purchasers had access to all the tickets.
The move turned out to be a disadvantage for the people lining up in front of the booths to buy their tickets for a number of reasons. Firstly, each of the booths had decided to sell tickets to a maximum of 50 persons per day, whereas there were no restrictions for online purchasers. Online buyers were also not bound by any time restrictions as opposed to the banking hours that the booths adhere to.
Secondly, many of these Moneygram booths faced technical difficulties over the last two days and could not dispatch the desired number of tickets. These difficulties arose due to problems with the server and poor-quality printers. For instance, according to an NCC bank official, their branch at Dinajpur could not sell a single ticket over the last two days. Several other branches faced similar problems.
According to another bank official, the lack of available tickets at the booths agitated buyers and led to violent scenes in their branches in Chittagong and Narayanganj. The anger shown by the ticket hopefuls could be justified by the fact that even if the booths were operating at full capacity only 39 per cent of the 250,000 available tickets (approximate number) would have been sold through the booths. But the word was that because of the technical problems the booth sales were underwhelming, and the problem was further compounded by the rest being snapped up online.
“A huge portion of buyers bought the tickets online,” said AttraBiT Technologies & Solutions Limited’s — the ICC-appointed ticketing agency — chief marketing officer Ehsan Sarwar Chowdhury.
“There were no specifications as to how many tickets could be sold online and how many in the booths because there are buyers from abroad as well,” added Ehsan. He further stated that they had sold more than a lakh tickets on the opening day.
Bank officials criticised the move to provide complete access to online buyers stating that it was harmful for their branches.
“Initially, we were verbally told that there would be a percentage of tickets to be sold from banks only but that did not happen. When we contacted the ticketing agency (Bigtree Entertainment Private Limited and Attrabit Technologies Solutions Limited) they said that there was a miscommunication,” said Md. Moniruzzaman, an NCC bank official.
“Because of that, our employees in different branches had to face the wrath of the public,” he added.