ISSA: Champs numbers are still being finalised

Tickets for this year’s staging of the April 5-9 ISSA/GraceKennedy Boys and Girls’ Championships are scheduled to go on sale this month, but the Inter-Secondary Schools Sports Association (ISSA) is still awaiting approval from the Government on the number of spectators who will be allowed to attend the event each day.

Keith Wellington, president of ISSA, told The Gleaner that his organisation is also still working out details of the system that will be used to purchase tickets for the five-day meet at the National Stadium.

“We are not in a position to disclose what the numbers are likely to be at this time,” Wellington said yesterday. “We are still working out how we will be doing our thing (ticketing), we have ideas that are different ... and in another week or so we should be able to share with the public what the procedures will be pertaining to the tickets and Champs,” he said.

“However, what we know for sure is that persons will have to be fully vaccinated and it will have to be verified by the Ministry of Health but everything else is being worked out,” Wellington said.

TICKET TROUBLES

Organisers of last weekend’s staging of the Gibson McCook Relays at the National Stadium complained bitterly about the Amber Innovations ticketing system that they were instructed to use by the Government to sell tickets as it took up to two hours for persons to make purchases. In fact, the organisers were approved to have as many as 10,000 fans at the event but just over 2,000 attended the relay carnival.

Wellington pointed out that his organisation has put systems in place to ensure that they do not encounter any issues with their ticketing platform for Champs.

“I am not going to comment on that (Gibson McCook Relays) just yet, but I would just say that we ensure that we use best practices only for a successful meet and that is what we have done for 110 years,” he said.

“Therefore for every area of the meet, we will try and make sure that we make use of the best available resources to make it the world-class meet that it has become,” Wellington stated.

“I think that best available (ticketing) system is the one that we are going to use,” he added.