FIFA Women's World Cup 2019 France - tickets

I finally was able to log in and see our tickets. Our tickets, which we ordered immediately once the ticketing site was opened last fall, are split up.

I do worry that, given the competence shown thus far, talking to the LOC ticketing people to try to get us re-seated may further eff things up but I suppose we'll give it a shot tomorrow once they are back in the office. I'll report back.

(Just speculating: I could print out the tickets as already assigned and then have them changed, and so could someone else, which could make for fun times once we get to the stadium and have our tickets scanned).

Eight World Cups, I've never seen this one before.

I also note, for what it's worth, the FIFA online store is/remains 'currently closed, but it will be back soon' (the same message has been up for the past weeks), which means that we can't purchase any official WWC gear, memorabilia, etc.

It's kind of like FIFA considers the women's game to be second class somehow, but I'm sure that couldn't be the case, could it?

 

(I suppose it would be too much to ask that we get actual physical tickets at the game as commemorative souvenirs, instead of just e-tickets. That would be a nice touch, especially for the final. This is done for other events.)

 

This is not atypical, in my experience. The worst tickets I've had for the men's World Cup were all CAT1. In general, we've had the best luck with CAT3s. Against my better judgment (actually at the insistence of a buddy), we bought CAT1s for the semifinal and final ... and the seats are not good. C'est la vie, I guess, at least we'll be in the stadium.

 

OK, fingers crossed that the avalanche of negative publicity is having an impact.

(Calling the embassy and saying that this doesn't help perceptions about how France views women's sports probably doesn't hurt either.)

The latest official response:

FIFA and the Local Organising Committee are confident the problems will be solved and the fans will be able to enjoy the matches as they envisaged.

— FIFA Women's World Cup (@FIFAWWC) May 21, 2019

 

After a long time on hold and a few disconnections, I was told by someone at the ticketing company that a request needs to be sent via email (from the email associated with your order) and that they can't do anything over the phone.

I was also told by the same person that there is a law in France that prohibits the separation of minors from parents/guardians at large events like this. I suspect that the company does not wish to be held in violation of this law, which means that there is hope that a solution can be found in many cases. (For the folks who say, "quit your complaining, you were told that maybe tickets would not be together, caveat emptor" -- in some circumstances, this is actually illegal.)

The contact info on the website of the firm handling the ticketing has been taken down.

 

Yes, that’s what I called. Once you get through, you’ll choose French or English, and whether it is a group (which I assumed meant a big bloc purchase, ie something more than 8 for one match) or individual ticket inquiry, and then placed in another queue. If it hadn’t taken me so long to finally speak with someone, I would have called back and tried to speak with another person, in case they might have told me something different. I’m guessing I have a 10% chance of happiness with my reseating request, but: nothing ventured, nothing gained.

 

We ordered 3.5 hours before you. Another family who will be with us in France ordered almost 30 minutes before us. A third family we know who basically ordered at the same time as us (I was texting with the father while was was ordering, as he was having trouble navigating the site in French — that for some reason he couldn’t, or wouldn’t, switch the interface to English should give you a sense of his comfort level online) is all seated together.

 

I'm thinking the French need to get themselves some better computer programmers, non? (Or maybe AP2S, the French ticketing firm, sub-contracted it out to somewhere else?) That said, this company has done ticketing for France Rugby, Roland Garros -- it's not a fly-by-night organization. Its client list is a veritable "who's who" of French sport.

I have to imagine that, for some reason, they decided to write new software from scratch and their QA process was as poor as their coding skills. Lots of firms provide ticketing software solutions. It's not like this is a category of problem that has not been confronted and solved before.

Who knows, maybe the local organizing committee made some changes to the seating at the (relatively) last minute and they tried a quick-and-dirty shortcut to re-allocating tickets to accommodate this and things went a bit haywire? Maybe the fact that you could order nine tickets per game somehow flummoxed the people writing the code to assign seats? Maybe near-proximity to FIFA was the equivalent of setting a powerful magnet next to some very sensitive electronics?

Whatever the case: There are no excuses for this. It's just incompetence.

The tone deaf, superior and haughty response of the local organizing committee is even more bewildering (or ... maybe it isn't?).

I can imagine that this real life case study might start showing up in both computer science and public relations courses in the not-to-distant future.

 

In this article in L’Equipe, it says that only “a few hundred” people were affected (in what is an interesting statistical anomaly, 16 of these “few hundred” are associated with my daughter’s soccer team) and that those with children in this category can exchange them now or on the day of the match. We just received an email from the ticketing folks that they would “try” to accommodate us on match day. I suspect that they want definitive proof that you are with minor children (which makes sense) and that they are hoping people just won’t go through the bother of trying to deal with this at the stadium on match day, as being denied may cause additional drama for the kids (which also makes sense) on what should be a day memorable for other reasons. Ok, I’ll stop posting about this. Enjoy the games, everyone, whether from your couch, a bar stool, or in the stadium, no matter whom you are or aren’t seated next to!