The Xix Commonwealth Games 2010 Delhi was one of the Important international multi-sporting Event held in India since the 1982 “Asian Games”. The Games were held over a period of 12 days from 3 to 14 October 2010 and saw participation from over 6,000 athletes from 71 Commonwealth Games Associations (CGAs). Ticketing for a major multi-sport event is the generally a very complex of all ticketing exercises. It had a total seating inventory in excess of 1.8 million seats for 290 sporting session in 17 sports at 12 venues over 12 days. Sale and distribution of tickets that traditionally span a 12 to 14 month took place in less than six months only. Mr. Bruce Wilkie was the appointed consultant who came in with experience of having executed the ticketing program in Melbourne CWG 2006 . The consultant himself was very unhappy with the delay by the OC on appointing the Ticketing Agency, as quoted by him in a multi sporting event such as the CWG the ticketing agency is usually appointed 2 years before the games but in this case the agency had barely 8 months to complete the job.
Ticketing agency constituting a consortium led by IRCTC with partners like Broad Vision and Ticket Pro was appointed BY OC of common wealth amongst the competitors like TCS with Ticket hour, Big Tree Entertainment with Book my Show and Kyazoonga with Ticketmaster and This was the Big win for government led PSU
A project plan was prepared based on the inputs given by the OC. The plan detailed every aspect of the project to the minutest level with specific dates. The project was so tightly scheduled that there was no room for error. A delay in any activity meant a delay in a dependent task which would result in delay of launch dates. The biggest deterrent which lied ahead was the noncompletion of venues without which any ticketing agency could not begin with the seat manifest process. Project was finally kicked off in the last week of January 2010 with a meeting between the core team and the OC ticketing team.
The sale was to happen through all modes i.e. Website, Retail Outlet, Call Center and Box Offices (During the Games). For this sale,The design, delivery and management of the ticketing technology platform with backend hardware and therefore of an integrated online real time transactional website was to be developed and managed. This website was to have link with venue and box office ticketing application to Fulfil the orders through various modes of distribution channels. For ticketing agency paper or electronic confirmation from OC was most important part of the work. Administration of ticket allocation and inventory management across a number of stakeholder group, The delivery and management of a variety of financial, operational and statistical reporting requirements was the next challenge. The fulfilment of ticketing orders including ticket printing and dispatch along with Logistics of moving physical inventory also formed job for TA. Fortunately, Cash management was only from Point of Sale and Retail Sales post but reconciliation were part of the scope of work of Ticketing agency. Scope of work also included providing the barcode data to the access control system maintained by another agency. The development of a CMS to manage content was of course there.
Biggest irony was that venues were nowhere close to completion let alone being completed by Jan 30th 2010 as mentioned in the RFP document. The consortium then started pursuing the OC Architects provide the drawings which could help build the manifest for phase 1. The sign off was received a month later than the planned sign off date from OC and this had a direct bearing on the launch date even though the consortium put in additional people and managed to squeeze the timelines by working round the clock
Sales for phase 1 began on 4th June with a mega launch done by the OC, sales for the first day touched 2,245 with revenues of Rs 28,25,800 & the second day it touched 5,661 tickets with revenues of Rs 61,37,350. The release of inventory was very staggered as orders of OC. It was very surprising to note that hardly any promotional activity was being undertaken by the OC to push sales in phase 1.The numbers of retail outlets were also very low initially since the OC delayed the decision to appoint outlets and the ones that were chosen had very low reach. The negative publicity around the games and the stadiums not being complete was already working negative for overall sale of tickets. Immediately after the Phase 1 launch the, teams started to work towards Phase 2 which comprised of selling actual printed tickets.
The ticket design was put in place by the OC wherein the consortium gave in critical inputs on the size of the barcodes, text on the ticket, size etc. OC became aware that having reserved seating is unrealistic due to the fact that the stadiums were getting delayed and without the physical seats being present there was no way reserved seats could be sold, they decided to convert all the sporting sessions to general admissions. Only the ceremonies were kept as reserved seats. OC futher decided to use sponsors as retailers which were mainly Central bank of India & Hero Honda outlets. Unfortunately, none of sponsors had any prior experience of selling tickets. IRCTC had to painstakingly train the retailers and setup the outlets from scratch. The sales forecast done by the OC at the time of tender was based on the forecasted seats. There were no stadiums present at the time of calculations. The forecasted revenue through ticketing at the early stages was Rs 100 crores which later reduced to 80 crores once the stadiums and the seating areas were ready.
Immediately after the launch of Phase 2 the next big task was to setup the Box offices, this again became a huge bottleneck since the OC faced several issues with the Delhi police on them not allowing the OC to open up box offices at the venues thus delaying the whole process. The OC had to make the box offices operational by the last week of September, which did not happen. More so the box offices had to be equipped with the PCs and broadband internet. The number of box office windows were reduced to 1/4th the original plan by the OC which caused tremendous pressures during the games time. Example: JLN stadium had an original plan of 3 box offices with 10 windows each; it was reduced to 5 by the OC.
Subsequently the games began with a grand Opening Ceremony. at large carried major criticism and negative publicity on the games all throughout the buildup took surprising U-Turn the day after the Opening Ceremony. In the process ,everyone wanted to get hold of tickets to get a glimpse of the games. Outlets and box offices were crowded, online sales picked up, Calls at the call center picked up. Most of the sections such as the accredited and sponsor zones remained empty. This left an impression on the general public that the tickets were sold out for an empty stadium.
Conclusion
I conclude my experience with note that There are few things in one’s life which are unforgettable and Execution of this work was one of them .spending 13 years with IRCTC ,in my first deputation as Group General Manager IT, I was given a chance to lead BIG team of company in an sporting event which transformed me from “A Sarkari Babu” to “Professional Service Provider- Ticketing Agency”. I remember closely that How Entire work was efficiently completed with accurateness by all teams . There were exceptional time bound deliveries by a central PSU which left many speechless and in return IRCTC team learnt many new processes. Eight months journey with all operations culminating in 12 days was full of thrills, hard work and Sleepless nights. Handling Ministers and his team amidst all the confusions created by the organisers on many occasions was not only difficult and but Risky too. Inspite of all those compelling circumstances , when I look back to what we had done during that period , I am left with happy and satisfying feeling that these type of international games have held in our country so far only once and Team IRCTC was blessed with an opportunity of serving India by vitue of being Ticketing agency for the same and GGM IT as leader was the not the default Guinea Pig, but a Blessed Babu who was gifted with an opportunity that one gets only once in life .Many of the actions taken by consortium led by IRCTC were also appreciated by the famous Shugloo committee constituted for auditing the work of Organizing Committee of Xix Commonwealth Games 2010 . Such experiences are worth remembering
