The era of Open Ticket starts in the Kaizer Chiefs and Magesi FC game

The new ticket vendor for Stadium Management South Africa (SMSA) managed stadiums, including FNB Stadium and Orlando Stadium, was introduced last Tuesday.

This followed the unfortunate scenes during the recent Soweto Derby of fake tickets and bribery, which led to overcrowding at FNB Stadium and over 110,000 going through the turnstiles.

"In the past we've had a problem in terms of the issues of till slips that you mentioned. Fans coming to the stadium only to find that till slips have faded through pocket or sweat or any kind of reason and when they get to the stadium and not able to scan through and be able to get in and enjoy the sport that they love so much,” Maphosa said.

“Also, we experienced a problem with vendors in most cases we found that they would record tickets as sold out whereas the tickets are still available. Systems errors, you find that some of the supporters they stay far from the vendors and they travel to go to the vendors and when they get they find out the system is out of order.

“So, we hope that this new ticketing system with Open Ticket will be coming through with the secure solutions that will help with delays and causing confusion with our supporters."

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Pirates’ next home fixture is against Mamelodi Sundowns on the 16th of this month and the club’s media officer Thandi Merafe says that having learned from the first game (Chiefs vs. Magesi) that these tickets would be used, they will be ready to implement them.

"We are hoping that this would be the future of ticketing and South Africa going forward because we firmly believe in this, we wouldn't endorse it if we didn't. We will be ready with our next fixture,” Merafe said.

“I think we will allow being the gracious parents that we are, we'll allow our kids Kaizer Chiefs to just test it out for us. We're hoping that for the fans that will come through, you'll be able to purchase from the comfort of your own phone and your own home.

“You can go to any outlet, if that's convenient to you between Shoprite, Checkers and USave. The payment method is what we're used to with cell phone banking. This is gonna be an easy system to adapt to."