As the digital ticketing system by Stadium Management SA (SMSA) proved disastrous again on Tuesday when Kaizer Chiefs hosted Stellenbosch at FNB Stadium, Amakhosi marketing director Jessica Motaung has urged fans attending Saturday’s Soweto derby to arrive early.
Motaung hopes that early arrival will help to mitigate the hiccups the new system, operated by SMSA’s in-house entity, MyTicket, has been experiencing since it was piloted in January.
“It’s important that we, as event holders, run the events properly... do all the things to make sure the experience is exciting, but the big thing here today is to say, can supporters come early? Supporters come on time; we’ve made sure through our sponsors and other partners that there’s an absolutely bumper event happening for them,” Motaung said.
“I am excited at how the world is changing and moving into a digital direction, and [we] as a stadium and a club are moving with the trends. We want to make sure that people arrive with their phones, but most importantly, that the fans are in the queues on time so they can scan their tickets.”
During the Chiefs-Arrows game it was the same old story where a multitude of frustrated fans still hadn’t entered the stadium a few minutes before kick-off, as the scanners at both the first scanning point and at the turnstiles refused or delayed accepting valid tickets, leading to long queues and congestion. People started to shove each other, with rain also making the situation worse.
On Monday SMSA CEO Bertie Grobbelaar revealed that they had enlisted the services of Fan Service, an independent company, to physically scan tickets. However, on Tuesday the process of scanning tickets was still not smooth even with Fan Service on board, leading to chaos.
In the past, several frustrated fans told Sowetan they feared that the delays at the scanning points could lead to a stampede during the Soweto derby.
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