Managing Director of Stadium Management South Africa, Bertie Grobbelaar - who has been roped in as auditor - has provided much-needed clarity on the ticketing crisis that has surrounded the Nedbank Cup final.
The Moses Mabhida Stadium is set to host this year's Nedbank Cup final, which will double up as the Soweto Derby with Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates the remaining two.
The build-up to the fixture has been dominated by safety concerns and an embarrassingly dysfunctional ticketing system that has left many supporters stranded. Some were unable to purchase a ticket, while others were charged for the tickets but did not receive their tickets.
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Albeit on an advisory basis, the PSL has called on Grobbelaar, whose experience with managing the Soweto Derby - normally held at the SMSA-owned FNB Stadium - is vital in handling an event of this magnitude.
Speaking at a joint press conference alongside PSL CEO Mato Madlala on Wednesday, Grobbelaar revealed some important findings from his preliminary report on what went wrong with the sale of tickets .
"I want to reiterate, I'm not representing Open Tickets or Stadium Management, and I'm not a representative of them. The PSL asked me to analyse the numbers," said Grobbelaar.
"The concern is the over-issuing of tickets. That was a major concern to the CEO of the PSL and the Chairman.
"From the data I obtained, I want to give you the relevant information. The capacity of the stadium is 49,307 seats. It is at a reduced capacity. That is the capacity and the number of tickets that were issued.
"41,000 general access tickets went on sale."
"The minute the tickets opened, it was sold out within 90 minutes. That caused a delay, a glitch, a crash - call it whatever you want it to.
"The fact is that tickets went on sale, and the system allowed more people to make payments than there is capacity for.
"Now that immediately raised concerns, and false information went out that people were issued with tickets. That is not the case. OpenTickets, with the agreement with ComputTicket as a distributing agent, stopped the platform from issuing physical tickets, but the transaction still went through.
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"They had to allocate from this overselling of the tickets. 19,561 had to be allocated to people who paid but did not get their tickets. 10,510 tickets were paid for but were over capacity, and those people have been refunded.
"All people (up) to the capacity of the stadium received their tickets.
"So, the message should go out that there were no more tickets issued than the capacity allows for. That is the most important message.
"Of the people who paid but could not be allocated tickets due to over-capacity, 80% - everyone who bought online - was refunded. 8% of those people were refunded.
"The other 20% are people who paid via EFT or other forms of payment platforms. They all received messages and upon receipt of their bank details, will be refunded via EFT," explained Grobbelaar.
Saturday's derby is at 15:30.
