Excitement is at its peak among fans ahead of the Bangladesh-Singapore Asian Cup qualifier match. After four years, the National Stadium has been freshly renovated, hosting a highly anticipated international fixture. Fans are eager to see stars like Hamza Chowdhury, Shomit Som, and Fahamidul in action.
Naturally, interest in tickets for the June 10 match at the National Stadium is sky-high. Football lovers’ main question: how can they get tickets?
BFF had already announced that online ticket sales would start Saturday night at 8 pm via the website tickify.live. Fans prepared accordingly. But when the time came, most couldn’t buy tickets, often encountering the message “503 Service Temporarily Unavailable” on their screens.
Many were left disappointed. Though BFF succeeded in building excitement for Hamza’s home debut, the online ticketing process turned into chaos.
Realizing the problem, BFF issued a statement Saturday night saying the ticketing website suffered a “cyber attack.” They apologized for the temporary inconvenience and promised to update the public soon. But nearly 24 hours later, as this report was written at 10 pm, ticket sales had yet to resume.
That night, Tajwar Auwal, a member of BFF’s Competition Committee, said the site had reportedly suffered a second cyber attack. He added that tickets would not be sold until 100% security could be ensured.
Speaking to reporters at the BFF office, Tajwar explained that over 100,000 users logged in during the first 10 minutes, but only 18,300 tickets were available. “When attacks come from two different sources, problems are inevitable,” he said. He insisted ticket sales should only resume once the issue is fully resolved.
When asked about the ticketing chaos, BFF vice-president Fahad Karim declined to comment and referred inquiries to Competition Committee chairman Golam Gaus.
Reached for comment, Gaus told Prothom Alo, “We worked overnight yesterday. The Tickify authority said ticket sales will resume shortly.”
However, he couldn’t specify exactly when, only saying the new sales would start tonight and that updates would be posted on BFF’s Facebook page.
Some fans who already paid haven’t received their e-tickets via email, sparking concerns about potential problems on match day. BFF assured that those who paid correctly would get tickets and that all errors would be fixed, Tajwar confirmed.
Confusion also surrounds the number of tickets sold. A cyber security firm claimed that Tickify’s server was hacked, allowing black market sales. They noted the platform can handle 400,000 users at once, but only 9,781 logged in Saturday, while allegedly over 17,000 tickets had been sold by then.
BFF official Golam Gaus countered, “Between gallery and club house tickets, plus VIPs, there are over 20,000 tickets. On Saturday, 7,000 were sold online.”
Meanwhile, Competition Committee member Tajwar Auwal gave a different figure: “Only 3,500 tickets have been sold so far.”
The truth remains unclear. BFF has never sold all match tickets online before, so this is a new experience for them.
Some believe BFF should have tested the online system earlier by selling tickets for the June 4 Bangladesh-Bhutan friendly first. Instead, they started selling tickets for the June 10 match right away, which contributed to the chaotic situation. Many feel the ticketing company’s capability should have been verified before BFF entrusted them with this responsibility.
