While the Nedbank Cup final tickets were expected to be sold out within hours after going on sale on Monday morning, Open Tickets, the ticketing service provider on behalf of Computicket, battled with demand as its system broke down several times on Monday.
This left thousands of fans angry after some paid but never received tickets for the huge Soweto derby cup final between Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates at Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban on Saturday (3.30pm).
This will be the second derby on consecutive weekends as Pirates beat Chiefs in Saturday's Betway Premiership clash at a packed FNB Stadium on Saturday.
Tickets for the Nedbank final opened for sale at 10am on Monday but Open Tickets' system broke down. Open Tickets is contracted to sell the cup final tickets on behalf of Computicket.
“Due to an overwhelming volume of traffic for this event, we experienced temporary delays caused by pushback issues from our host system. These have since been resolved,” Computicket said via its X account on Monday. “These have since been resolved.”
However, supporters trying to buy tickets continued to bemoan the hiccups online.
Some fans who woke up to buy tickets and braved long queues at retailers were turned away. A few supporters who spoke to Sowetan said some Shoprite branches told them they were no longer selling the tickets, referring them to digital purchasing, where there were also hiccups.
Scores of fuming social media users shared their experience of battling to buying tickets online. Some X users said their payment was successful but they never received confirmations and reference numbers. Others complained they received confirmation e-mails but were still waiting for actual tickets hours later.
The Computicket system did not allow people to buy more than four tickets, which allays suspicion the system may have crashed due to people buying in bulk.
In an attempt to eradicate the growing phenomenon of ticket stockpiling that usually culminates in them being sold at a higher price on match days, last week the league confirmed only four tickets would be sold to a single purchaser.
The tickets are still expected to be sold out in a matter of hours when the hiccups are fixed.
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