Ticket sales for Singapore match 'closed', no info on how many remaining

Tickify, the online ticketing platform appointed to sell online tickets for the much-anticipated Bangladesh-Singapore match of the Asian Cup Qualifiers, was up and running at noon on Tuesday, before closing to public a couple of hours later.

According to the site's founder Iftikhar Ifty, the platform started selling tickets again at 1:00pm and was 90 percent way through selling their share of tickets when The Daily Star spoke with him at around 1:45pm.

Later at around 3:00pm, when this report was being filed, the site showed "ticket sales closed" sign. 

Ifty, however, didn't give any estimate on how many tickets were sold so far, saying: "The official figures can only be shared by the BFF".

BFF competitions committee chairman Golam Gaus, when contacted, said he was no wiser on the issue. He said he was in a meeting regarding the ticketing issue, promising to divulge further details about the number of tickets sold later.

These statements come in the wake of a nightmarish experience for legions of fans, who had been waiting with bated breath to get a ticket to this much-hyped June 10 fixture at the National Stadium in Dhaka.

Initially scheduled to go online on May 24 at 12 noon, the sale was deferred by eight hours, only for fans to get into a maze of excitement and frustration as the site remained up for only few minutes before going down.

The authorities, both BFF and Tickify, had apologised, calling it a case of suspected "cyber attack" in face of massive demand for tickets. The BFF officials promised that things would go smoothly when it announced that the site would open to public at 10:00pm on Monday night. However, most fans had to go through another round of 'endless wait' for the tickets, some waiting all night "in queue" to get the coveted prize.

Ticket-seekers were met with notices such as: "You are now in line. Thank you for your patience. Your estimated wait time is ....." or "We are currently experiencing high levels of traffic and are using a virtual queue to limit the number of users on the website at any one time. This will ensure you have the best online experience possible."

Eventually some fans got their tickets while others were in the dark, leaving them to vent their frustration on social media.

BFF is expected to release 18,000-plus tickets for the galleries and few thousand more for the hospitality and other boxes of the National Stadium, all through online ticketing system.