| Event: | England in Australia 2006/07 |
DateLine: 1st June 2006
Tickets for this year's Ashes cricket series were snapped up at a rate of ten per second when sales opened here Thursday, according to reports from Cricket Australia.
CA said tickets for the five Ashes Tests had sold faster than for any other cricket series held in Australia. As many as 1,82,000 tickets were sold on the first day. An estimated nine million dollars (US$ 6.75 million) was realized through sales. The much-anticipated clash between crickets two oldest rivals gets underway in Brisbane on November 23.
Despite the huge demand, tickets were still available with 41 days of cricket on offer, CA said. A minimum number of 6,35,500 tickets are for the so-called Australian Cricket Family out of an overall total of 720,000.
CA chief executive James Sutherland sympathized with the fans who missed out but said CA and the agencies were prepared as well as they could be. "Perhaps we have to some extent not understood the huge response that was going to happen from nine o'clock, but at the same stage we are seeing that every second, 10 tickets go out the door," he told reporters.
Members of the ACF had the first chance to buy tickets as CA intended to give priority to Australian fans ahead of English supporters at the five Tests. To qualify as ACF members, fans must have, at some stage, been Australian residents, be able to provide an Australian postal address and have registered by May 2. Members can purchase tickets from June 1-15.
Sutherland added that CA would clamp down on scalpers selling tickets on the Internet, as it had the right to cancel tickets. Anyone who's bought a ticket under the terms and conditions is not able to on-sell that ticket. We are tracking that down," he said.
In the initial rush on Thursday, ACF allocated tickets were sold out for the first three days of the second Adelaide Oval Test and for the first four days of the fifth Sydney Cricket Ground Test.
Tickets will go on sale on June 19 to the general public, non-Australian residents of the ACF and overseas fans. About 10 percent of tickets have been set-aside for these customers, CA said while adding that all remaining tickets not bought during the ACF priority period will also be added to the pool of available tickets on June 19.
