Mumbai:There was a wave of disappointment among cricket fans on Friday when tickets for the ICC Women’s World Cup 2025 final suddenly started appearing “Sold Out” on BookMyShow. The special thing was that no official announcement was made about the start of ticket sales. After this incident, BCCI and the organizers started being accused of poor management and lack of transparency.
Many fans expressed their displeasure on social media platform X (formerly Twitter). He told that the final ticket page was initially showing Coming Soon, but within a few minutes it changed to Sold Out, without any clear information. One user sarcastically wrote, “Wow @BookMyShow! Tickets went from ‘coming soon’ to ‘sold out’ faster than Harmanpreet Kaur’s cover drive!” Another fan wrote, “Thank you @BCCI and @BookMyShow! No one even knew when the tickets were sold. What wonderful transparency.”
After the sudden unavailability of tickets, some fans called it a case of mismanagement and ticket blacking. One user wrote, “Why are tickets for the Women’s World Cup final not available? Are they being black-marketed? If so, then @BCCI and @ICC should be ashamed.” Another wrote, “This seems to be a classic case of ticket touting. There is no transparency for the common fans.”
Seeing the increasing anger among the fans, BookMyShow responded on social media and said, “Hello, due to the overwhelming response, the tickets were sold out in no time.” However, the company did not clarify when the tickets were released or whether more tickets would be made available in the future. This further increased the confusion of the fans.
Interestingly, BookMyShow had already announced an exclusive pre-sale with Google Pay between October 22 and 24. After that, it was said that the general sale would start on October 24 at 7 pm. It is likely that most of the tickets in this ‘pre-sale’ have already been sold, but the general audience did not receive any update regarding subsequent availability or the new phase. This was the reason why the fans got angry after suddenly seeing “all tickets sold out”.
Till Saturday, neither BCCI nor BookMyShow had issued any official statement on this controversy. Whereas the India vs South Africa Women’s World Cup final is going to be held at DY Patil Stadium in Navi Mumbai and there is tremendous excitement among the spectators about this match.
India is going to play the Women’s World Cup final on its home ground for the first time. In such a situation, this controversy regarding transparent sale of tickets has emerged like an eclipse on this historic occasion of women’s cricket.
Fans say that the board, which talks about “promoting women’s cricket”, should at least ensure clarity and justice in the basic process like ticket sales.
