Ticketing scam involving India-SA match at Eden Gardens comes to light
A big scam has come to light involving the highly-anticipated ICC Cricket World Cup clash between India and South Africa at Eden Gardens in Kolkata tomorrow. Over the last few days, tickets for the match have been sold openly on Facebook at exorbitant prices, at 10 times, or even more, the price. Not just that, even tickets that are not for sale, like clubhouse tickets, are up for sale.
And when people have tried to book tickets through the official online ticketing partner, bookmyshow.com, many have seen messages on the site saying tickets are not available after just a few minutes. Not just that, giving false hopes, they have been made to wait in online queues for hours and then told that tickets are not available.
This has happened not just with last-minute ticket-buyers but for even those who have tried to book weeks in advance.
These aspects have come out in the last few days through reports on various news media outlets.
Today, a Kolkata-based English news outlet, NTT published an investigative video on this issue. It showed touts openly selling tickets to desperate fans around the Eden Gardens Stadium—who have missed out on buying the tickets the legitimate way because of the above-mentioned issued.
Several of the fans questioned said there needs to be an investigation into this issue as it has the hints of a big scam.
To buttress this point, the journalist who was conducting the investigation live, opened up a few unknown websites like viagogo.com and eticketing.co, and certain people on Facebook to show tickets for the match selling at exorbitant prices, like the touts are doing at the ground.
The question the reporter righty asked is, are these websites authorised by the BCCI, India’s cricket governing body, or ICC, the world cricket governing body to sell the tickets?
FIRs have reportedly been filed with the Maidan police station, according to the report. The police called up BookMyShow officials for questioning. Earlier, it was reported that the Cricket Association of Bengal president, Snehasish Ganguly was called up by the police regarding the scam but be reportedly said that it was not possible for CAB to do anything.
The scam has robbed thousands of genuine fans of the opportunity to watch what would surely be a great match. Would it mean that that many seats in the approximately 70,000-capacity stadium would go empty, like it has happened at several venues across the country (the BookMyShow bungling or scam, whatever you call it, has happened for many matches)? Only tomorrow will tell.
But empty or not, the fact remains that a big scam has been in the making and it need a high-level investigation.
