Soccer Rip Off

Thursday morning consisted of ringing about 24 ticketing agencies, Tourism Associations, Sports Stadiums etc to try to figure out where and when the Iraq/Australia World Cup Qualifier was being held on the weekend in Dubai.
In the finely oiled machine that is any type of information dissemination in this country, I got nowhere, nothing, until a stealthy fellow Aussie found out the name of the stadium and the time.
We had a big day at the water world and then made our way to the stadium, took an eternity in the traffic and getting lost a few times, to arrive at this cement pithole that could loosely be described as a stadium with rusted barbed wire, hanging down all over the place, conveniently at eye level. Chel had his Bert Newton shirt on, Roger, a Warnie cricket shirt, Meg, an Aussie flag. There was some good hearted teasing between us and Iraqis as we walked to the ticket counter, which was a hole in the wall.
Now, I have been to sporting events where there is a different price structure of tickets depending on seats, hospitality etc, but never on what language you can speak and what country you look like you're from. Tickets were being sold to Arabic speakers and citizens for AED20 or about $5, however if you happened to be Australian, the tickets suddenly cost one hundred US Dollars!!!!!! Attempts at getting Iraqis to buy the cheaper tickets were futile, as police were actively chucking out anyone with a cheap ticket who didn't fit with the visual norms of an Arabic citizen.
There were children, decked out in all green and gold finery, sobbing, their Dad's holding eskys, trying to placate them. The sad kids were the worst, what an introduction to the World Game!!???
I am still in shock and very pissed off that this was allowed to happen.

To rub salt into wounds, we lost.


From the Sydney Morning Herald:

SOCCEROOS fans said they were being held to ransom by unscrupulous Iraqi football officials who were attempting to charge them 20 times more than Iraqi fans for tickets to the Australia-Iraq World Cup qualifier played early today, Sydney time.

Australian fans who travelled to Dubai found themselves victims of a major sporting ticket rip-off which appeared to be organised by officials. Rumours of a two-tiered ticket pricing system emerged from Australian expatriates living in Dubai, who believed there were plans to keep Socceroos fans out of the 16,000-seat stadium by making the match affordable only to Iraqi supporters.

And travelling Socceroos fans found out just how low the Iraqis are stooping to win a match and remain in World Cup qualifying contention.

"It's outrageous. It's not just an insult to Australian sporting fans, it's an insult to Australia," Sydney fan Paul Bateson said.

"It's been a nightmare. We were promised by officials that we could buy tickets, then kept waiting for two hours, then told we could buy them for $US100 [$103] each.

"The locals are being charged between 20 and 50 of the local currency [dirhams, about $5-13]."

The Iraq football association is handling match ticketing, but virtually no ticketing information has been given to Football Federation Australia. Bateson was among four Australian fans who attended Socceroos training in the hope of finding out how to buy tickets.

After waiting for an hour they were ushered away by a robed official, who told them in front of media: "You can buy tickets, just come with me."

The attempted rip-off follows a dirty-tricks campaign by the Iraqis during the week in which the Australian team have been the victims of blatant biased pre-match gamesmanship. Among a series of bureaucratic and logistic hassles they have faced, the Socceroos were not given the use of match balls until their second-last training session, then had the Iraqis try to deny them a suitable match-eve training run on the Al Ahli Stadium where the match is being played.

In contrast, the Iraqis were granted every possible favour by FFA officials before their first leg 1-0 defeat in Brisbane last weekend.