Football World Cup Ticket Sale Results in Violence
Sports franchises have the tendency to attract loyal and sometimes fanatical fans. When the fans are unable to see their team play on a regular basis, they tend to be a little eager to say the least when the opportunity to do so arises. When you are talking about watching your team compete in a competition that only comes around once every four years it can be nearly guaranteed that fans will do whatever it takes to see their team in action.
Such was the case on Thursday when organizers set the final phase of their ticket sales plan in motion. Up till then fans were only able to purchase tickets via the internet. This was the first time people were able to buy them in person at banks and ticket centers in each of the nine cities hosting action during this year’s World Cup action.
Close to a half a million tickets were made available to local fans for the first time. Local demand was so great that over 50,000 tickets were sold in the first eight hours of operations. Another 300 tickets for the final match were set aside for local fans to purchase; this came as a surprise since the match was listed as sold out. However, officials are blaming that high demand for the glitches that the system suffered which resulted in intense fan frustration and the eventual violence that broke out.
The carnival type atmosphere that the day began with soon ended as the system, Match, which officials used to control ticket sales began to have issues. At one point, with close to a thousand fans waiting to purchase tickets in Cape Town, the site of the second game of the tournament between France and Uruguay, problems with the system caused severe delays. At one point, it took close to four hours to serve just 32 fans.
Those waiting got understandably upset when they appeared to be waiting and waiting with no end in sight.
"No one's informed us what's going on. No one's directing the public outside. A primary school sports event could be better organized than this," said Theo Spangenberg, who had been waiting for 16 hours and still hadn't made it inside the newly opened facility. "For a World Cup, an international event of this nature, it's a really, really bad show." (MSN)
At one point officials felt the need to call in the local police to help calm the angry masses waiting for tickets. To add to the trouble, earlier in the day, prior to ticket sales opening up, a 64 year old gentleman suffered a heart attack and passed away.
Cape Town was not the only location that experienced difficult and tense moments. Fans became irate after repeated issues with the system crashing in Durban and Polokwane. Eventually police had to be called into to calm fans in those locations as well.
This is not a good omen to a tournament that already has concerns over potential violence breakouts as the World Cup approaches and when the teams arrive. Recently, well known activist Eugene Terre'Blanche, founder of a radical extremist group called Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging, was brutally murdered by several of his black employees following an argument over wages. Members of the organization have already stated that they will exact revenge and have told World Cup teams that they should not come to South Africa in June for fear of being caught up in the violence.
Officials are also concerned about the unruly behavior that fans have exhibited in matches in the past and that violence occurring in a region that already has tense race relations.
Supposedly there is a German location available to host the tournament if conditions in South Africa appear too volatile. South African officials are urging the radical factions to ease their tensions for the sake of the nation as the World Cup approaches. Emergency plans also have been drawn up to deal with any foreseeable problems.
As many as 41000 police officers are prepared to keep the peace. If necessary, plans have also been devised to call on military forces to help keep the peace if needed.
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