Ticket sales of a regressive football industry

(Baonghean.vn) - On December 3, the moment VFF officially distributed tickets for the second leg of the semi-final match of the AFF Cup 2016 between Vietnam and Indonesia, the iron gate of the organization's headquarters was knocked down. But trust in ticket sales has long since collapsed.

According to the plan announced by VFF, starting from 9:00 a.m. on December 3, VFF will accept ticket purchases via official dispatch from agencies, unions, and organizations. Direct ticket sales at My Dinh Stadium will take place from 7:00 a.m., through 5 ticket windows around the stadium.

But in fact, long before that, from 7pm on December 2nd, under the cold air of Hanoi, hundreds of people brought blankets and mats to line up, and the later it got, the more crowded it became. Many of them were from Hung Yen, Bac Ninh, and even Nghe An, jostling to buy tickets.

The gate of VFF headquarters was knocked down on December 3.

To restore order to the crowd, which sometimes numbered several thousand people, the riot police had to use batons. At the VFF headquarters on Le Quang Dao Street (My Dinh), from 5am, a line of people also appeared waiting to buy tickets via official dispatch.

After the railways reorganized the online train ticket sales system, the only one in Vietnam that organized ticket sales manually was the VFF. Vietnam currently has tens of millions of internet subscribers, not to mention 138 million mobile subscribers, of which about 22% use smartphones that can connect to the internet to buy tickets online. In fact, there was a time when the VFF organized a ticket sales website, but for some reason, the Federation has now "regressed" back to the traditional queuing style despite public outrage.

Mr. Thanh Tam, who works at Nhan Dan newspaper, said: "All last week, I called the Federation's bosses to buy tickets but the phone lines were always busy. Finally, luckily, thanks to a sports newspaper colleague, I was able to get 4 tickets."

Mr. Hoan “Pao” - Chairman of Hai Phong Football Fans Association, who had just returned from Indonesia to cheer for the team, said harshly: “We made an application to buy 300 tickets for our brothers, but the Federation said they were all sold out so they only gave us 6 tickets, so we didn’t take them. I went to buy them on the black market and they said there were so many that we could buy as many as we wanted, even hundreds of them in a row, which made us very upset. These must have been smuggled out from the Federation, hundreds of them in a row, not to mention that football tickets in Vietnam are very expensive, 100 times more expensive than in Indonesia.”

Mr. Tran Song Hai, Vice President of the Vietnam Football Fan Association, said bitterly: “I myself had to buy black market tickets to invite my friends to watch the second leg of the semi-final... This is clearly an act of profiteering, treating fans like trash. Stop saying "VFF always respects fans"!

Many tickets for the second leg of the AFF Cup semi-final between Vietnam and Indonesia were smuggled onto the black market.

After buying a ticket, Mr. Tran Tuan Hung, a fan from Bac Giang, answered us in frustration: “I lined up at 5am. Many people were upset with the way VFF sold tickets. The number of people lining up to buy tickets was about 5-6 thousand people, while VFF only "gave alms" to 2 booths at both ends of the stadium, each booth had 2 tables, so how many tickets could they sell in the morning? I was lucky to stand right at the entrance, only 2m away, but it took me 2 hours to buy it.”

Not only Mr. Hung, but tens of thousands of people, whether they were able to buy tickets or not, are very upset with the arbitrary and confusing way VFF does things. People think that VFF officials “try to take the punches, just to get the cake”…

Those who buy tickets through official dispatch are not any luckier, they also have to wait, line up, and are also harassed, and the approval process does not follow any criteria or rules. People only look at the “size” of the stamp or the level of relationship with the “regular partner” and not at the demand or the order of the queue. How many tickets from this route are brought to the black market, is something that only VFF knows?

With the maximum capacity of My Dinh Stadium being only 40,000 seats, and fans having a demand of 3-4 times that, getting a ticket to the stadium is not easy, as everyone knows. But what makes the public extremely indignant is whether it takes too much time and effort to get a ticket to the stadium or not? Why are they being sold openly on the black market at exorbitant prices, and in such a large series?

In countries with professional football, tickets are distributed online, registered via text messages, call centers, and sold at various locations in the city... A friend of mine who works at the British embassy said: For Manchester derby matches, Old Trafford has 86,000 seats, and the organizers only sell tickets within 3-4 hours, very gently and politely, so the audience, even those who cannot buy tickets, are satisfied.

As of this writing, black market tickets are being sold for 3 million VND/pair for the 400,000 VND ticket class. This is not a measure of the enthusiasm of Vietnamese fans but rather an answer to the question: Why has Vietnamese football not developed?

An Thanh