If you have a ticket to the blockbuster at the Eden Gardens this Saturday, you didn't just buy a ticket. You also won a lottery.
For the first time in Indian sport, an online lottery is being used to determine who gets to buy tickets to some matches featuring India along with the knockouts at the ICC World T20 2016. The model, while introducing an element of luck in the race for tickets, eliminates the possibility of early birds blocking out the rest in a first-come-first-served system.
Fans are required to register with the official ticketing agency of the tournament, BookMyShow.com, and apply for a maximum of two tickets. Once the registration window closes, applications are screened - an email ID and a mobile number are mandatory - and entered in an automated online lottery supervised by an auditing firm. The lucky ones are intimated by email and/or text so that they can make their purchases.
For the India-Pakistan Super 10 match, registrations opened last Saturday and continued till Sunday.
"Direct online sale of tickets had been the norm so far. Tickets for high-demand matches would be sold out in no time since some people would be waiting to grab them the moment bookings opened," said a BookMyShow official.
The process was considered especially unfair to women, children, the elderly and people living in different time zones. "Now there is a much longer window for people to register," the official said.
The Cricket Association of Bengal (CAB) confirmed that this was the first time match tickets, including those for the Indian Premier League, were being sold online based on registrations and then a lottery.
Gautam Dasgupta of the CAB said the challenge was to be fair to as many people as possible since demand was high for the few tickets on offer. "Just as there are a lot of people who do not have access to online registration, there are innumerable professionals who want to see the match but cannot afford to stand in a queue at the Mohammedan Sporting Association ground for tickets from the crack of dawn or even earlier," he said.
Another CAB official said the last time he had seen such a craze for tickets was for the IPL match between the Kolkata Knight Riders and Pune Warriors India, captained by current CAB boss Sourav Ganguly, on May 5, 2012.
Although Eden is the largest cricket stadium in the country and seats 67,000, only 10,000 tickets were on sale this time after providing the International Cricket Council, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the CAB and its members and clubs their respective quotas.
Dharamsala was the original venue of the India-Pakistan match and around 5,000 people who had bought tickets to watch the action there are expected to be at the Eden Gardens.
"We have kept aside 5,000 tickets for people who had made bookings for the Dharamsala match. They can visit the counters at the Mohammedan Sporting ground any time before Saturday's match, show the original tickets and get replacements for the Eden match," said Biswarup Dey, the CAB treasurer.
He clarified that tickets would not be sold to anyone over the counter.
A lottery is the accepted model of ticket sales for global football and tennis events that are watched by people in many more countries than cricket. "As many as 35 million people had applied for a few thousand seats in the final of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil. In such a situation, lottery is the only way out," an official of a ticketing agency said from Delhi.
Houseful hotels
Several star hotels in Calcutta are already running full with the Eden Gardens hosting multiple big-ticket matches, at least three of them featuring the Asian giants.
Taj Bengal, where BCCI officials and some cricket teams are staying, has been packed for several days. "Our rooms were all pre-booked," said Modhurima Sinha, director of public relations, Taj Group (east).
A source at the hotel admitted that the presence of top cricketers from the subcontinent had upped the desirability quotient of a room at the hotel. "We have been bombarded with (additional) requests for rooms after the match date (Saturday) was announced. But our rooms are already full, not a single one to spare," he said.
Hyatt Regency and The Park are houseful for the big-match weekend, too, as is ITC Sonar, where the Bangladesh and Sri Lanka teams are staying. The Lalit Great Eastern has been going full since last week, an official of the hotel said.
At The Oberoi Grand, the official word is that "occupancy has gone up" and requests are pouring in for rooms over the weekend.
Raja Biswas, a doctor at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital in Wales, is among the few fans who did not have to depend on the luck of the draw to get tickets, thanks to a friend willing to part with two membership passes.
"I advanced the date of our vacation at the last minute after the India-Pakistan match was shifted to Calcutta. I so want my daughter Risha, who is just 10, to soak in the atmosphere of an India-Pakistan match at the Eden Gardens," said Raja, a resident of Cardiff.
While Raja's wish has been fulfilled, Tanmoy Kumar Sow would have to be content with watching the match on television. The 32-year-old from Chinsurah had registered for a ticket on March 12, but missed out in the lottery. Ditto for Subham Mukherjee, a manager with a leading apparel brand.
Schoolboy siblings Shoaib and Anas had accompanied uncle Gulam Ghaus to the Mohammedan Sporting box-office wearing pagris in the Team India colours on Monday morning, only to learn that tickets wouldn't be sold over the counter and that online registrations had closed.
Some people went the extra mile when they heard that their hopes of being at Eden this Saturday rested on a lottery.
A 30-year-old Ballygunge resident who asked for his identity not to be revealed registered for tickets with email IDs of several family members and from different IP addresses. His strategy clicked.
"You get two tickets for each successful registration. I managed to get 10 in all," he said.
Deluged by requests for passes to the dream match, the CAB bosses have long stopped taking calls.
Have you got a ticket to Eden? Tell ttmetro@abpmail.com
