Bhubaneswar: Despite the craze created around the Men's Hockey World Cup 2018, several fans were left disappointed today after they failed to buy tickets for the inaugural ceremony to be held at Kalinga Stadium and Barabati Stadium in Cuttack.
Though the online ticket sale began today, several fans were a disgruntled lot owing to severe technical glitches they faced while trying to book tickets online.
As per the announcement of Hockey India, the tickets for both the events were to be made available on the website- www.ticketgenie.in. The tickets for the both the events were priced at Rs. 500 per person. Officials sources said only two tickets can be booked through a single e-mail ID.
"Despite attempting to log on and proceed through payment window to book tickets several times, I failed. This was certainly very disappointing as the authorities had claimed that the online ticket sale would be completely hassle free," said Rojalin, a fan.
There seems to be rush among fans for tickets of the inaugural ceremony as music maestro and Oscar winner A.R. Rahman, Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan and Bahubali fame actor Prabhas along with other celebrities are expected to perform live at Cuttack and Bhubaneswar.
Around 10,500 tickets were supposed to be on sale for the opening ceremony at Kalinga Stadium Bhubaneswar and 30,000 tickets for the AR Rahman programme in Cuttack the next day, sources said.
The online redemption of tickets will start from November 22 at Gate no – 4 of Kalinga Athletics Stadium along with other locations in Bhubaneswar. However, the date of online redemption of tickets for the World Cup Celebrations event at Barabati Stadium has not been announced yet.
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However, Hockey India was fast enough to respond over the issue and tweeted, "Your overwhelming response to purchase online tickets for the Opening Ceremony & the World Cup celebration events of the OHMWC Bhubaneswar 2018 from ticketgenie.in has led to the slowing down of the website."
State Sports & Youth Affairs joint secretary, Manoj Padhi on the other hand informed that, "The website might have crashed due to heavy traffic. Hockey India can better say about such technical issues. However, we take discuss the matter with them."