ICC to give full refunds after Trent Bridge ticket delays
The ICC has encouraged fans who have not yet received their tickets for World Cup games over the weekend to print them out in advance, as issues with its systems led to the offer of full refunds for those delayed getting into Trent Bridge for West Indies' win over Pakistan on Friday.
Steve Elworthy, the tournament's managing director, said that a combination of late sales and people needing to collect tickets that had not been delivered led to "1600, 1700 people standing in a queue", forcing the ICC to consult with Ticketmaster about offering the facility to print tickets at home.
In the lead-up to the tournament, a number of fans had taken to Twitter to complain about not receiving tickets despite purchasing them up to a year ago. While the ICC has overseen the delivery of more than 700,000 tickets, Elworthy said there had been problems with some getting through.
"What's happened is that we've got these tickets that weren't delivered and then we've also got people wanting to collect at venues from late sales," he said. "So it's 400 or 500 people to collect on a day - which is not unusual at some of the Test match grounds. But you bring four or five people with you that you've got tickets for, suddenly there's like 1600, 1700 people standing in a queue trying to get tickets. So it looks like there's a whole load of people there.
"Obviously we need to fulfil that, so we've got to try and find a way. We had all these people wanting their tickets, reprinting them and handing over the collections and there was just a delay because of the volume of people there to get their tickets. That's the nub of the matter and we're working to resolve that now."
The problems at Trent Bridge were exacerbated by the fact that Pakistan collapsed to 105 all out in 21.4 overs, with the whole match over before the scheduled interval - meaning anyone that was delayed getting into the ground may have ended up missing a significant proportion of the action.
"Anybody whose tickets were printed after half past 10 at the ticket box office, because the delay was there, we're going to refund 100% of their ticket value," Elworthy said.
"The perfect storm was the fact that Pakistan got bowled out for 100. If the score was 200 for 3, these people would be seeing cricket until 6 o'clock. I probably still would have thought about a refund of some sort because they missed some of it, but it might not have been a 100% refund."
Elworthy said that Ticketmaster would allow ticket-holders to log into their accounts and print off tickets for games over the "next couple of days", but he indicated it could be extended throughout the tournament if problems persisted.
In a statement released after the conclusion of the match, the governing body said: "The ICC Men's Cricket World Cup would like to apologise to any fans caught up in queues here at Trent Bridge today. We be offering a full refund to anyone who was impacted by the delays because of the high volume of ticket collections. This will happen automatically based on data from our ticket scanners along with time of ticket issue from the box office.
"We are currently working with Ticketmaster to resolve all outstanding issues and have put in place a number of measures to ensure fans don't suffer this inconvenience at future games. This includes the introduction of a print at home ticket and improved distribution methods at the venues."