Bafana ticket sales hit a spike

EFF leader Julius Malema’s call on South Africans to support Bafana Bafana in their 2018 World Cup qualifying clash against Burkina Faso on Saturday at FNB Stadium just might have yielded positive results.

In a series of tweets on Thursday‚ Economic Freedom Fighters head Malema took to social media urging South Africans not to give up on the embattled national team.

Stadium Management CEO Jacques Grobbelaar confirmed to TimesLIVE on Friday that 21 000 tickets have been sold with a day to go before the must-win encounter.

That might not sound like much. But given the public backlash at Bafana’s two defeats against Cape Verde last month that have left them needing to win their last three games to reach Russia 2018‚ and that by Tuesday only a reported 300 had been sold‚ it appears to represent a significant improvement.

Surely as influential as Malema’s call was that alarmed organisers reduced the price of tickets from R100 to R50.

“We are currently standing on 21 000 tickets sold‚” Grobbelaar said. “We think that number will improve overnight again.”

However‚ even the figure of 21 000 is somewhat inflated. Grobbelaar said that about 1500 of those are the tickets given to The Star to hand out free with copies of the newspaper.

“We have part of 21 000 tickets that are the complimentary tickets that went out to The Star‚ which they are issuing to the people who buy the paper‚” he said.

“It is a very small amount I think the complimentary tickets dished out to the paper – it’s about 1500 tickets.”

Bafana last played at FNB Stadium in March 2014 when they received a 5-0 trashing from Brazil in a friendly match.

- TimesLIVE