Stay in line for hours, bring your family, leave without ticket
Mohun Bagan and East Bengal are facing each other in a national final for the first time since Federation Cup 2010. The excitement was bound to be high. But ignorant organizers made life tough for the people who wanted to see the Durand Cup Final in person.
The Durand Cup Committee decided not to release online tickets for the final. Meaning the fans would have to start travelling from the morning on a working day to get their hands on the ticket. Only two tickets per person were being given out from the counter. That means if one is planning to attend the match with their friend group, at least half of them would have to miss their work/college. Add to that, the fatigue, sun, and mud they had to deal with. Atleast there was food.
Sourish Dey, an East Bengal fan, went with three of his friends. “I woke up at 4:45, had breakfast, and reached the EB club camp at 6:30. I was stunned when I saw atleast 500 people queuing outside the camp for the ticket. It’s 6:30 in the morning we are talking about. That’s four and a half hours prior to the counter openings,” he shared his hustle.
The reason he went so early was that he had already faced the consequences of being ‘on time’. “In the earlier Derby game (Group Stage),” he continued. “I reached at 10:30 but I was lucky enough to get my hands on the ticket by 5:45 – at the very last moment,” he scoffed at the very thought. “That’s why we took off early today.”
The anticipation of such a high-profile final should be enough to guess that the ones who reached on time, had near to zero chances of getting the tickets. Word from the Mohun Bagan Ground is that at one point, the queue went past the Eden Gardens.
But something even worse happened. Over one-third of the tickets were given away for free on complimentary basis. Not to mention that the same amount of tickets were put up as in the Group Stage game. The impression of ticket scarcity was made to make people panic in line. All of this unfolded in front of their naked eyes as they returned home empty-handed. Durand Cup’s social media team posted about the final being sold out but was also instructed to disable public comments.
The humidity of Kolkata had its chance to shine. A lot of people fainted and were hospitalised for lining up for hours to watch their favourite team play. All of this could’ve been avoided if the organizers had a basic sense of technology. It’s 2023 and the tickets for almost every sporting event get released on online portals. Everyone in the queue had the same opinion. One, they could have gotten tickets more easily; two, the working class wouldn’t have lost out on a day of sick leave.
