Sulom working on ticket sales challenges

 Super League of Malawi (Sulom) says lack of adequate gadgets is affecting the advance tickets sales initiative for top-flight matches.

Sulom president Tiya Somba-Banda said the challenge they face at the moment is that the number of gadgets used in the exercise is on the lower side.

“The gadgets are not as many on the ground and our partner Nitel is working on bringing in more so that we should have a number of  distribution points.

“For instance, in Blantyre we only have three selling points in a week, but we would want to increase because there are people say in Limbe who would want to buy tickets well in advance, but at the moment we are unable to do that.

“We would also want to have these gadgets in Mzuzu and Karonga where we have stadiums and games being played,” he was quoted as having said by MBC Radio 2FM.

The Sulom president also said they need to intensify their ticket sales marketing drive.

“We need to be engaging stakeholders well in advance, especially the supporters, so too our advertisers.

“A good example was the Be Forward Wanderers and Silver Strikers game which we only advertised on a Friday morning for a game the following day [Saturday] and we had sold about 500-plus tickets by the time we were closing on Friday,” he said.

Nitel head of business development and sales Godwin Chimseu confirmed in an interview yesterday that they are working with Sulom and FAM [Football Association of Malawi] to step up advance ticket sales.

He said: “The bottomline is Covid-19 and the desire is that we intensify pre-sale of tickets.

“Currently we have [selling] points, but we have also ordered more gadgets so that we reach out to as many places as possible.

“We already procured the equipment and it is on its way.”

Chimseu said the target is to do away with the sale of tickets at the stadia.