GFF: UEFA Super Cup Tickets to Go on Sale at Box Office after Online Sale Fails Again

Tickets, allocated for Georgia, for UEFA Super Cup in Tbilisi will be available at box office after Tbilisi-based online ticketing service provider has failed again to secure unimpeded sale of tickets on its website, president of the Georgian Football Association (GFF), Zviad Sichinava, said.

Announcement came late on Tuesday after thousands of football fans had to wait whole day in vain in an online queue on Biletebi.ge website, an exclusive retailer of over 29,000 tickets for EUFA Super Cup at the Tbilisi Dinamo Arena between FC Barcelona and Sevilla FC on August 11.

Biletebi.ge was originally scheduled to launch online sale of tickets from June 22, but the website crashed as it failed to handle online traffic.

On June 29 GFF announced that Biletebi.ge “fixed” the problem and tickets would go on sale from the morning of June 30 based on an online queue system to manage website overload.

But the problems were reported already shortly after the launch of the ticket sale as there were numerous complaints that users were failing to place an order even after completing queuing phase.

Biletebi.ge, acting on behalf of GFF, acknowledged the problem on Tuesday evening and announced that it was terminating sale of tickets.

GFF said that only about 2,060 tickets were sold before the process was terminated out of total 24,000, allocated for sale locally for football fans in Georgia.

“We were in touch with EUFA throughout the day, asking them [for a permission] to terminate [deal] with Biletebi.ge and by the end of the day we have received a response verbally from UEFA and Biletebi.ge has been sidelined from this process,” Zviad Sichinava, the president of GFF, told Rustavi 2 late on Tuesday.

He said that tickets will be sold at box office, adding that GFF already had a preliminary discussion of the issue with the European football’s governing body.

He also said that GFF will discuss further details with UEFA through a videoconference on July 1.

“We will need several days to print tickets and to then start selling them at box offices,” Sichinava said.