On 13th November, Bangladesh will face Nepal in a friendly match. Ticket sales for the game began at 2 pm yesterday. As of this report, 26 hours have passed, yet the majority of the tickets remain unsold.
The Bangladesh Football Federation (BFF) is responsible for managing ticket sales for international matches in the country, through its Competitions Committee. The chairperson of this committee, BFF Executive Member and former national footballer Golam Gaous, mentioned, “So far, around 4-5 thousand tickets have been sold. The match is still a week away, so I’m hopeful that football fans will purchase their tickets.”
On 9th October, during the AFC Asian Cup qualifiers, Bangladesh played against Hong Kong in Dhaka. In stark contrast to the situation with the Bangladesh-Nepal match, all tickets for that game were sold out within just 30 minutes of being released. Golam Gaous explained the difference, saying, “That was an Asian Cup qualifier match. As this is a friendly match, perhaps the fans are taking a bit more time to purchase their tickets.”
The renewed enthusiasm for Bangladeshi football is largely attributed to Hamza Dewan Chowdhury, a player in the English Premier League. According to Gaous, ticket sales will significantly increase once Hamza arrives in Dhaka. “Many supporters are likely waiting for Hamza’s arrival. I hope that once Hamza arrives on 10th November, ticket sales for both the Nepal and India matches will pick up. Ticket sales for the India match will begin on 9th November.”
Hamza’s arrival in Bangladesh has sparked immense excitement among fans, especially since he gained permission to play for Bangladesh. On 25th March, Hamza made his debut for Bangladesh in Shillong against India, and his first match for Bangladesh was on 4th June against Bhutan. Prior to that, tickets for the Singapore match were released on 10th June.
Tickets for that match were in extremely high demand. For the October window, the BFF decided to trust Quicket, rather than their usual ticketing partner, Ticketfy. Even so, there was less pressure on ticket sales during that window. In fact, tickets were sold out within 30 minutes of being made available.
Despite the expected demand for tickets for the upcoming Nepal match, which will feature both Hamza and Samit, only 5,000 tickets have been sold so far.