Gurias lead fight against counterfeit tickets scourge

 By MARTIN LIRI

THE Agmark Gurias have found a possible solution to the elimination of fake tickets – which have caused continuous headaches for rugby league administrators in Papua New Guinea.

The system, details of which if shared with the rest of the Digicel Cup franchises, would certainly improve the revenue-generating potential for teams in the country’s premier rugby league competition.

Digicel Cup teams and even the PNG rugby Football League when hosting international matches have struggled to generate good returns on the gates due to poor facilities and the problem of counterfeit tickets.

But Hunters organisers can be spared the ticketing problems when they share the Kalabond Oval with the Gurias this year. 

PNG Rugby Football League CEO Brad Tassell (pictured) highlighted the ticketing system yesterday when announcing details of the SP Hunters’ season tickets for home games in the 2014 Intrust Super Cup competition.   

Season tickets can be bought at Agmark Hardware in Kokopo starting today. Tassell said they had received a lot of enquiries about season tickets therefore they decided to include those. He said benefits for season ticket holders included not having to wait in queues to buy tickets for each game. There will also be special season ticket holder fan days during the year.

Tassell said fans would save money and be guaranteed tickets to every home game this year.

He  said Agmark have implemented a new bar code system and scanners for entry to all games in 2014.

“As far as I know it’s the first time this has been done in PNG and it certainly eliminates the problem of fake tickets,” he said. “All tickets are bar coded and will be scanned upon entry by staff so there’s no possibility of fake tickets being produced.”

“I want to congratulate Agmark for taking this professional approach to managing rugby league in the region.”

Tassell said the tickets were well priced for fans. “It was important to the PNGRFL board and management that fans have access to different levels of ticket pricing.”

He said that buying a season ticket has the advance of paying for 10 games and getting 2 games free.

“General game day tickets start at K20 per adult and K10 for children, however we also have a family price of K50 per game for 2 adults and 2 children which works out at K12.50 per person.” 

Season tickets sales will close on Sunday, March 2.