2011 Cricket World Cup Tickets Go on Sale
The biggest cricketing competition, the fifty overs ICC Cricket World Cup, is set to be staged in nine months’ time, and ticket sales for the event have started with online tickets made available in the opening stage of the sales.
The tournament is going to be staged in the Indian subcontinent, and an announcement in this regard was made during a press conference held in New Delhi.
The three countries hosting the tenth edition of the prestigious One-Day International tournament are India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
The craze for the game is at its prime in the region, with India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka all having been crowned world champions at least once in their limited over cricket history.
The tickets have been made available online since the start of the ongoing month, and the onus of the process has been taken by official ticketing partner KyaZoonga.
The three co-hosts are going to share the hosting of the games, yet the lion share goes to India, who will play host to the final for the second time, after hosting the 1987 thriller between old rivals Australia and England.
The press briefing was held in Bangalore, and was addressed by Neetu Bhatia, the Chairperson and Chief Executive Officer of KyaZoonga, and Brijesh Patel, Secretary of Karnataka State Cricket Association. The duo provided the details of the sales plan.
Bhatia disclosed that there are a total of two million tickets up for grabs throughout the tournament. "There are in total over two million tickets, overall that will come up for sale in different phases. Phase one which is online, which is currently on. Phase two which will be retail outlets and then finally the latter half of Phase two which would be venue sales, which will begin closer to the tournament, which will be sometime in January and February of next year," said Bhatia.
Bhatia added that the tickets have been made available well in advance, nearly nine months before the tournament, and the response has been good, with people from all over the world, especially countries like the United States and United Kingdom, buying the most number of tickets put on sale online.
Meanwhile, according to Bhatia, the tickets are being sold in such a way that restricts one person from buying them in bulk, which will help in preventing black marketing of the tickets.
The cap on maximum tickets was four; hence a buyer cannot purchase more than four tickets.
On the other hand, bulk tickets bought by corporate firms will be scrutinized by the concerned authorities.
"There is also a separate booking forum for any corporate or bulk orders. They are reviewed very carefully by not only us, but they are taken to the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) and ICC (International Cricket Council) for them to vet, and only then when we know it's a genuine buyer are those tickets released.
At this stage, not one single corporate order has been released. So again, the idea is fair and equitable access, so no one can really go out there and buy two hundred tickets and resell them," added Bhatia.
Unique packages for the hosts have also been made available to allow the customer to access a combination of matches to suit their preferences.
The tournament is set to capture the imagination of millions of diehard fans in the subcontinent. At the same time, the event would be an acid test for the fifty over format which is struggling to co-exist with the crash, bang and wallop twenty over version.
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