House full

MiD DAY digs out the reasons behind scarcity of tickets and complimentary passes for the CWG

Even on empty stadiums, the Commonwealth Games venues displayed House Full boards. It defied all logic but that is just the tip of the ticketing scam iceberg, one of the many floating in the corruption pool of the mega sporting event.


Box Office: Ticket counters at Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium. file pic

Official documents in MiD DAY's possession reveal how the Organising Committee and the corporate sponsors goofed up on the distribution of tickets and complimentary passes.

First the Organising Committee's estimates of hosting 1 lakh foreign spectators were proved wrong with only 75,000 making it to Delhi. The off-target prediction proved the first death knell, as 60 per cent of the total tickets were reserved for them. The remaining 40 per cent, according to the OC plans, was to cover all domestic requests, including complimentary passes and entries through accreditation cards.

Also, big corporate sponsors failed to distribute complimentary passes allocated to them. And those who got the passes chose to catch the next train or plane to the nearest holiday destination rather than cheering the Indian athletes.

The probe panel going into the alleged Commonwealth 'scam' will also seek explanation over OC's failure in estimating the number of genuine spectators and the ticketing fiasco.

"The total number of accreditation cards issued was much more than original plan. In fact, the OC members and staff had issued many accreditation cards to their friends including senior bureaucrats and their family members to oblige them. This was one of the reasons OC brought down the number of tickets to be printed," said a source.

Ticket seekers had to return empty handed from the ticket counters. Even major sponsors complained that they were doled out a minuscule number of tickets. OC also didn't follow its original plan of number of complementary tickets to be printed.

"Though the complimentary passes were supposed to be only 10% of the total tickets, more were later asked to be printed," added the official. Citing an example, the official said that in the first instance, the MCD was issued about 480 complementary tickets for councillors and their family members. Later, the Mayor and leader of the MCD house mounted pressure on OC officials then they had to release another 50 tickets to them.

Rather than placing a one time order for printing of tickets, the OC opted to place print order of tickets on demand basis. "It was the bad ticket sale and distribution management that incurred huge revenue losses for OC and ticket sales failed to reach target. The OC finally only managed to earn around Rs 40 crore plus from the ticket sales against the estimated figure of Rs 110 crore approximately before the Delhi Games 2010," said the official.