The Twenty20 world cup cricket started last week in South Africa and I had the opportunity to attend a couple of the games played at Newlands in Cape Town. I must say that the organisation of the tournament has gone on well, except for only being able to buy Castle draft and no other beer! To start off with the crowds that have been attending the games have been quiet large and this largely due to the fact that ticket prices have been affordable to the majority of cricket lovers across the country and even those not interested in cricket are willing to pay R20 or R40 a ticket just for the sheer experience.

Now it is clear that what the organisers of this tournament wanted, was for the stadiums to be full or at least be 70% full for all the games. I feel that they have been able to achieve this by making tickets affordable and another way they have filled the stadiums is by getting school children to attend. I was surprised seeing lots of school children in the night game between South Africa and the West Indies on Tuesday; didn’t these children have to go to school the next day? The atmosphere at the games has been great with near full capacities.

So far this world cup has gone well, now my question is, come the soccer World Cup in 2010, how much will tickets be and will they be accessible to the majority of local South African’s? For this Twenty20 cricket world cup, one only had to pull R40 out of their wallet, go to CompuTicket and they have a ticket, as easy as that. But somehow I do not think it will be that easy in 2010.

It has always been a problem at all the past soccer world cups that there are never enough tickets and 2010 will be no exception. South Africa is trying to get FIFA to lower the prices of the tickets in order for the tickets to be affordable to the general public in South Africa. In the 2002 World Cup in Korea / Japan the cheapest ticket went for US$50 (R358) and in 2006 in Germany the cheapest ticket was 28 Euros (R278). Now on average, to watch a local soccer game in South Africa one has to pay R25. There is a big difference between R25 and R278. My fear is, when these tickets get released on the market and people are able to start buying them, will there not be one person or a group of people who buy a large chunk of these tickets and sit on them until 2010 and then look to sell them on a ‘black market’ just before the games in 2010, for inflated prices? I hope they introduce a system that limits the number of tickets an individual can buy or they place some tickets in a lottery system where you enter to buy a ticket and if your name is drawn ‘out of the hat’ then you can go and buy your ticket.

Let’s not have tickets unaffordable or restricted to only the elite, what will a world cup be with stadiums full with people in suites and crocodile skin shoes only because they are the ones who can afford to attend the games? As opposed to a stadium with fans draped in flags, paint all over their bodies and blowing their vuvuzela’s!

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