AFF Cup 2018 tickets, the race between VFF and "brokers"

First of all, everyone wonders why VFF only sold 24,000 tickets to My Dinh Stadium, leaving 16,000 tickets for foreign affairs. If the upcoming match at My Dinh Stadium has only a few thousand Malaysian fans present, the anger will certainly increase a lot.

Ticketing Technology 4.0

As always, VFF is determined to combine “tradition and modernity” by using 3 distribution channels: official dispatch, online sales and manual queuing. Although it is expected to sell 60% (about 15,000 tickets) via official dispatch, on the first day, 800 units applied to buy with a total of 60,000 tickets registered.

Queuing up to buy tickets with official dispatch at VFF. Photo: AT

VFF is forced to balance the quantity and try to sell a minimum of 8-10 tickets to each unit, but how to control the distribution and how to get the other 15,000 tickets directly to the audience without going through hundreds of "ticket brokers" in front of My Dinh Stadium is still not done.

On October 29, when the dispatch began to be received, the VFF headquarters on Le Quang Dao Street, Phu Do Ward, Nam Tu Liem District, Hanoi had two fences. Sports journalists who were usually "familiar" with the place could not even approach the VFF's document window within an hour, let alone outsiders.

To get one of the approximately 4,000 tickets sold online through the two addresses https://ticketonline.vff.org.vn and https://vebongda.vff.org.vn is not easy. Before the online ticket sales opened at 9:00 a.m. on November 1, 2018, the "brokers" had hired dozens of IT students of the Polytechnic with high-speed internet.

Surprisingly, even after registering online, viewers still have to go to VFF agents to continue lining up to receive tickets. Students are paid from 50,000 to 100,000 VND, depending on whether the ticket is good or not, to hunt for tickets online for stands C and D, which are sold out. Tickets returned after November 8, 9, and 10 have basically been completed.

If you don’t get the above two opportunities, you have no choice but to go to My Dinh National Stadium to buy tickets directly. Although the organizers announced that tickets will be sold widely from 8:00 to 17:00 (or until tickets are sold out before the end of sale) on November 11, 2018, people have been lining up in the rain since midnight the night before.

Ticket prices for the match against Malaysia are not cheap, with 4 original prices of 150, 200, 300, 400 thousand VND/ticket, but VFF still has to control each fan owning 1 ticket voucher to buy a maximum of 2 pairs of tickets.

If it is true that VFF sold 7,000 tickets through the “traditional queue”, then at least 2,000 people had to brave the sun and rain to get tickets to watch the Vietnam team play. Despite arriving early and being quite patient, many fans could not overwhelm the ticket brokers who were lining up to reserve tickets for Vietnam - Malaysia at My Dinh.

There are about 100 "ticket brokers" who are always present, hiring people to queue up to buy tickets. My Dinh "ticket brokers" also know how to "collect" disabled veterans' cards to take advantage of incentives to get good tickets to the stadium to watch the match with Malaysia.

"Ticket brokers" are increasingly professional

While VFF is still struggling to find a way to sell tickets directly to fans, the "ticket brokers" have become more modern in their approach to customers in need. Invitation tickets and tickets sold via official documents are being advertised widely on social networks as well as online trading sites in a "whatever you want, we will please" manner, of course at a high price.

Fans lined up to buy tickets directly on the morning of November 11 at My Dinh Stadium. Photo: AT

The ticket scalpers are using tricks to create an artificial shortage of tickets to push up ticket prices. After the first day of direct ticket sales, the number of tickets appearing on the black market is still quite large and the scalpers are "screaming" 4-5 times the original price.

A pair of good seats in stands A - B, priced at 400,000 VND/ticket, was sold for 2.4 million VND by the ticket brokers, and the invitations were also sold for 3 million VND/pair. Many ticket brokers happily delivered the tickets to customers in need, free of charge.

Those who are familiar with the black market agree that for a live televised match, ticket prices are unlikely to be as high as they are advertised. If the weather is not favorable, they may return to their original prices.

But the question of how to get the majority of stadium tickets to fans is still a question that many VFF terms have not given the public a satisfactory answer???