LOC Enthused at Ticket Sales

With 14 days to the start of the ICC Cricket World Cup, the Jamaica Local Organizing Committee (LOC) has expressed enthusiasm at the level of ticket sales for the local leg of the tournament.
Executive Director of the Jamaica LOC, Robert Bryan, said that while the first match of the tournament featuring the West Indies vs Pakistan was almost sold out, he was surprised at the level of support for the less high profile matches such as West Indies vs Zimbabwe on March 19, for which 44 per cent of Sabina Park has been sold, while more than 5,000 tickets have been sold for the Zimbabwe vs Ireland match on March 15.
“I say surprised, because everywhere I go people heap skepticism on what they call lesser matches,” he remarked at a press conference held recently at his Oxford Road office.
He indicated that interest in the warm-up matches was also picking up. “Our expectations were lower than what has materialized at this point. Everyone understands that the warm-up games would not be necessarily the most attractive matches but the response in the final phase, especially to those matches which involve the Windies, has been encouraging,” he noted.
While not providing details on the number of tickets sold to date, Mr. Bryan said: “I can confirm that the numbers are looking quite good. Of course, the sales in the group stage are higher at this point than warm-up matches. I can confirm that we will not have empty stadiums.”
He noted further that with Jamaicans being “last minute people,” ticket sales were expected to intensify as the tournament neared.
Despite the encouraging sales, Mr. Bryan said that the LOC was not leaving anything to chance and was taking steps to increase sales points across the island. He noted however, that the process has been challenging. “We have had some difficulty in getting that done because of course, the Host Venue Agreement (HVA) stipulates one ticket outlet and that has been up and running, but we are under extreme pressure from almost all parishes for ticket point of sales,” he pointed out.
He explained that under the HVA, tickets cannot simply be sold from any location, “because we have to ensure the visibility of the sponsors at allocations.
Essentially, we have to reproduce the ticket office at Shop 51 and 52 in Kingston Mall and there is tremendous cost to do that”.
Nevertheless, the Jamaica LOC is working around the difficulty and a number of initiatives have been agreed upon to boast sales, including the implementation of a mobile ticket office. “We have activated two such offices. One is now in Trelawny, and we expect to operate one on the south coast of the island and proper schedules will be developed around that,” Mr. Bryan said.
“The vehicle .has been operating over the last two weekends and we are happy with the response,” he informed, adding that on the inaugural trip to Trelawny, the mobile ran out of tickets.
In addition, effective February 22, the Jamaica LOC opened a ticket office at the Trelawny Multipurpose Stadium. “We are trying to work out other operational issues to keep it going fully. I want to be clear that we have not worked out all issues but we are opened now,” he said.
“We have requested permission to vary some of the rules so that we can make the tickets available at other locations across the island and we are awaiting approval for that because we are getting a lot of calls from various parts of the country for more points of sale,” the Executive Director continued.
Mr. Bryan also disclosed that the LOC has secured arrangements that would allow the organization to market tickets to companies. “Companies are responding to that. We are working closely with the Jamaica Cricket Association and we have developed a sales and marketing plan, which will tie corporate Jamaica to school programmes to get more tickets sold,” he said, while noting that some parts of the initiative had yet to kick in. Meanwhile, the Jamaica LOC is also set to unveil a campaign that will focus on rallying the region to support the West Indies.