Fans suffer as ticketing failures and corruption plague match day

The threat by PSL chairman Irvin Khoza that the Soweto derby could be moved from FNB Stadium to Moses Mabhida in Durban is a chilling reminder that the league seems to be absconding responsibility when it should be protecting football fans.

Khoza’s threat, made in an interview with TV reporters at the PSL offices this week, can’t be seen as a long-lasting solution when, just this year alone, football fans suffered immensely when attending the match between Kaizer Chiefs and Orlando Pirates.

In response to February’s near-stampede situation, when over 110,000 fans crammed into the stadium, including 15,000 who had no tickets, Stadium Management SA launched a new system with a view to stemming the tide. That system has been an utter failure, as seen again over the weekend, when gates were slammed shut in the faces of fans holding tickets, simply because they had arrived late.

The PSL’s response can’t be merely to take away the teams from their Gauteng bases. It would be unfair on the fans who can’t afford to travel and, in any case, Moses Mabhida, with a maximum capacity of just under 60,000, would exclude a lot more people.

The reality is that the derby is not the only fixture that has been oversubscribed over the years. Fans who attend Pirates matches at Orlando Stadium have long complained of arriving there with legitimate tickets, only to be turned away on grounds that the stadium is already full.

It has been alleged that unscrupulous security personnel accept bribes from people without tickets to smuggle them into the stadium, as was the case with that infamous derby of February.

If the PSL’s solution for the derby is to migrate it to Durban, because, as per Khoza’s reasoning, “there was no incident when the derby played there last year”, what about Orlando? Will Pirates’ games move too? Why did the Springboks v All Blacks test match, which also attracted over 90,000 people, go without incident?

The PSL needs to invest in making the stadium experience enjoyable for fans. It can start by enforcing seat numbering so that if a fan who has purchased a ticket for a certain block and seat is somewhat delayed, they can still find their place unoccupied by someone smuggled in by a corrupt marshal.

Moving the derby to an even smaller venue like Mabhida, which already has a challenge of greedy people buying tickets in bulk with the sole intention of reselling them for profit, would be a disaster bigger than what we are witnessing at Soccer City.