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Loading ...Quite right Scott. Even leaving aside the balloting issues though, whaty genius decided to sell all the tickets on the same day. As if putting 3 million tickets on sale and then telling everyone how hard it will be to get them wasn’t going to fry the servers and phone lines.
A farce waiting to happen
By Scott 2 years ago, at the start of June Leave a comment on this post
Just a quick post from the Antipodes to put in my two cents on the Great Australian Ticketing Fiasco. Needless to say, Cricket Australia won’t accept a bar of responsibility for this; just as needless to say that they won’t learn from this if it happens in the future.
What I would have done is copied the system used by England; for all the faults of the ballot system, the UK ground authorities are well experienced in dealing with demand for tickets that well outweighs capacity. Cricket Australia has this ‘we know better’ notion when it comes to England and English cricket, which may have had some relevance in the 1990’s but certainly isn’t the right mindset in 2006.
I’m not concerned in the slightest that Australian grounds will be full of visiting Englishmen this summer; the tourist boom to the economy will be well worth it, and it will teach the good for nothing, fat, lazy, whining Australian public to appreciate Test cricket more. I’m fed up to the back teeth of going to half-empty Test grounds. And, yes, I do have my tickets, if not for my home Adelaide Test, but I did get tickets for Boxing Day. 100,000 fans on the MCG for an Ashes Test; a dream come true for someone like me that cares far more for Test Cricket, and Ashes Cricket as the pinnacle of Australian Test Cricket.
Tags: 2006, adelaide, antipodes, australian-cricket-family, ballot, boxing-day, cricket-australia, england, farce, good-for-nothing, great-australian-ticketing-fiasco, melbourne, responsible, tourism |
6 Responses to “A farce waiting to happen”
June 1st, 2006 at 9.04 pm
June 1st, 2006 at 11.14 pm
Despite having friends offer to buy me tickets I took the decision to miss this tour and do NZ the following year instead. Cricket Australia created this frenzy which has led to an unknown quantity of tickets being in the hands of people who have no intention of using them but view them as a means to a profit. This will kill the backpacker following England in Australia and scatter fans throughout the ground destroying the atmosphere. Perhaps this is what Cricket Australia wanted but despite having the cash I for one won’t put money in the pockets of touts and carpet baggers. There’s plenty of good tours out there to do and I’m just glad I did Aus before they ruined it.
June 2nd, 2006 at 1.47 am
I agree the blame should be clearly sheeted home to Cricket Australia. I have no idea why they didn’t decide to sell tickets to the 5 different tests on 5 different days.
Its obvious they have little concept of the issues involved. I wouldn’t leave Ticketmaster out of the loop when it comes to blame either. As a broker they have a responsibility to advise Cricket Australia that their facilities would be unable to handle such a load.
June 2nd, 2006 at 3.46 am
Once again Cricket Australia, and in particular its boss James Sutherlad, has shown its total disregard to the people of Western Australia.
It was obvious that WA members of the “cricket family” were the ugly cousins when CA decided that those wanting to book for the Perth Ashes test had to book two hours after ticket sales opened on the east coast. When you add on the fact that the WA tickets were being sold via the same phone number and Web page that was being used to sell tickets to the eastern States tests it was no wonder WA cricket lovers were left out. I do not know of anyont in Perth who was able to acquire a ticket. Unfortunately they were all gone snapped up by those in the east who had first crack, scalpers and English Fans. Australian cricket has gonje from disaster to disaster since Mr Sutherland took the reigns (ie the poor itineraries for the Ashes series in England and the debacle in Bangladesh). Do the honourable thing Mr Sutherland. Fall on your sword.
Yours Sincerely Colin Sandell-Hay
June 2nd, 2006 at 7.04 am
Yes a big fuck up on many counts, but mainly a complete mis-read of the psyches of the buying public; an earlier post had alluded to the fact that only gnarled and fanatical ex-pats would queue for 5 hours on the phone, i tend to agree.
June 2nd, 2006 at 9.51 am
Um . . . I got tickets in Perth . . . only took an hour and a half . . . Sorry to throw a spanner in the whinging. Bit totally agree with Scott’s original post. Aussie fans just don’t tend to get as worked up as English, or perhaps other nations. Good for their mental health, but not so good for their cricket team . . .
