Comments on: Ticket Chaos – an ICT failure or FIFA greed?

By: Prof Barry Dwolatzky

Prof Barry Dwolatzky — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 21:23:26 +0000

I certainly apologise to Jason Anderson, and the other people named in this posting on my blog, if my comments are interpreted in any way to cast doubt on their professionalism or competence. I said – or I think I said – that they would have been technically able to sort out the ticketing problems, but someone (and I named “FIFA”) decided that the economics of doing so wouldn’t make sense.

Jason – since I am eager to check my facts – could you cast some light on who was responsible for the IT systems that support the ticketing?

Regards
Barry

By: Jason

Jason — Sun, 04 Jul 2010 20:08:55 +0000

I know you’re just doing a blog here with no real obligation to fact check or be truthful, but I just thought I just want to point out that all of your assumptions above are incorrect. Most importantly (to me anyway) Dave, Tim, Paul and myself had nothing to do with ticketing.

regards,
Jason

By: Prof Barry Dwolatzky

Prof Barry Dwolatzky — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 14:51:10 +0000

Peter is absolutely correct. A local ticket provider with existing infrastructure, distribution channels, tried and tested software, etc. would have been much more sensible.

As Adrian says MATCH never seemed committed to work in partnership with the local ICT sector.

Brazil – take note!!

By: Peter Scheffel

Peter Scheffel — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 10:21:48 +0000

Maybe a local ticket provider would have been the real answer, not to provide a new channel, which made absolutely no sense for the bank (FNB) and others concerned, as their branches looked like a voting station in 1994. A local ticket provider would also have invested in South African infrastructure.

By: Adrian Schofield

Adrian Schofield — Sun, 30 May 2010 13:54:29 +0000

You raise two interesting questions, Barry. The first is the professionalism of the “service provider” – did they simply bring along the system that handled the German event and expect it to work here? Did they do any serious research to establish a fresh set of user requirements, based on knowledge of the South African environment? (I was involved in one of the workshops that Match conducted in South Africa when they first arrived here – but I am not sure they took much notice of our input.) Did they modify their system as they learned from experience? Failure on any of these counts should be seriously embarrassing to them as professional practitioners.

The second is whether the FIFA/Match relationship has any vision beyond self-sustainability. There are parallels with dominant nations, dominant corporations – even with dominant religions. Convinced that they have pre-emptive rights to exist and to operate, their leaders belittle those who ask questions or offer alternatives, and they brush off failures. They draw in vast amounts of money and promise success – but will never be held accountable for the failures they leave behind.

Perhaps South Africa can capitalise on its “South-South” relationship with Brazil to give our South American friends a “heads-up” for 2014.