Cricket Web site has fans fuming

By Bronwen Kausch for Dimension Data South Africa
Johannesburg, 17 Jul 2002

Dimension Data yesterday said its ticketing system for the 2003 Cricket World Cup was flowing smoothly after initial hiccups and that 16 000 tickets were sold over the Internet.

But ITWeb readers near and far had a different story to tell, with some going as far as accusing DiData of a bald-faced lie.

One lucky reader yesterday managed to log into the 2003 cwctickets.com site, which requires prior registration in an attempt to minimise credit card fraud. However, he found it impossible to complete a credit card transaction and was forced to abandon his attempt without tickets.

Others were not so lucky, with most readers saying they could not log into the ticket site at all, and not for lack of trying. One wrote a script to automatically attempt to log into the system every five seconds and ran it from both local and foreign servers, to no avail.

IT directors, Web developers and other experts from around the country and Europe reported the same lack of success.

They have criticised DiData`s technical ability and planning, with some calling it a disgrace to their profession. They expressed considerable doubt that the system could be sold to other sporting codes.

Responding to the flood of ire, Graham Cook, DiData`s project manager for the event, says no amount of simulation testing could have prepared organisers for the demand.

Cook says all channels of the system were thoroughly tested including simulated load tests.

However, he says the main problem was in the allocation of the tickets and the unprecedented demand for the Wanderers packages.

"What the public don`t know is that there were only 6 200 packages available for the Wanderers and it was those that the fans were after," explains Cook.

The site was tested four weeks ago and Cook says the transaction processing time was sufficient.

"We simulated 100 000 transactions in two hours and the consensus was that the system was adequate."

Cook admits that in hindsight, DiData should have been more prepared for the flood of interest when sales went live and says opening all channels at once caused delays.

The servers were hit with over 4 000 buyers when the site went live on Monday and Cook stresses that there is a limit to how many transactions could be processed simultaneously.

Bronwyn Goeller, DiData`s head of investor relations, says the fact that over 135 000 tickets (R18 million worth) were sold in two days should be viewed as a success story.

"There is an emotional aspect involved which is fuelling the downside to this story. South Africans are cricket mad and we realise there are a lot of disappointed fans out there, but the fact that the system never crashed and that we have processed so many sales should be seen as a positive story," says Goeller.