Tickets for Hyderabad’s Deccan Chargers’ games in the forthcoming India Premier League Twenty20 matches went on sale on the Deccan Chargers’ website (www.DeccanChargers.com) on Saturday 12th April 2008. Given the state of anticipation in India regarding the India Premier League; both Deccan Chargers and its online ticketing solution provider EventAvenue; expected a positive response to the online booking option. However, neither company anticipated the sheer volume of bookings that happened during the first 24 hours. Deccan Chargers fans snapped up over 5000 tickets on the first day itself.
To avoid standing in long queues, Deccan Chargers fans have eagerly purchased tickets on the Internet. The high octane league matches at Hyderabad’s Rajiv Gandhi International Cricket Stadium. The matches will start on April 22 with Deccan Chargers taking on Delhi Daredevils. Tickets are priced from as low as Rs. 250 to Rs. 2,500 per match. Mr. J. Krishnan, President and CEO of Deccan Chargers said, “Our intention for going online was to make it easy for our fans to buy tickets. The focus was on simplicity, ease of use and speed. To add to this, our partner EventAvenue, provided us with the most comprehensive bundle of payment options. This opened out our tickets to the largest paying audience in the country. Naturally, this strategy has worked well for us.†Analyzing the reasons for this runaway success, Mr. Sathya Radhakrishnan, CEO of the Rachnoutsav, the Event Organizing Company said “Today, the other IPL teams are accepting only limited payment options on their websites i.e. only MasterCard and Visa. These limited payment options reach only a small fraction of the paying audience. How many young cricket fans you know who have credit cards? India is a credit adverse society and the credit card penetration is at a low level (around 14 million credit cards). But, a vast majority of Indians (in tens of millions) have bank accounts and would like to pay for tickets directly from their bank accounts. Today, more than 60% of transactions on the Indian Railways website are done through Net Banking and Cash Cards. The Deccan Chargers is the only team, which is allowing their fans to pay for their tickets through more than 20 banks accounts in real time. This payment feature has really been appreciated and more than 40% of the Deccan Chargers tickets are paid through Direct Debit to Bank Accounts”.
EventAvenue, which provides end-to-end Ticketing solutions, has a built in payment gateway which accepts 5 major credit card brands and more than 20 net banking payment options. For example, a Deccan Chargers fan can actually pay for the tickets directly through his State Bank of India bank account or through any of the other 19 banks available. This facility is not available with any of the other 7 IPL teams.
Mr. Vishwas Patel, CEO, Avenues said, “We have added another segment to our EventAvenue solution – Ticket Management. With our new Ticket Management solution, event holders will enjoy advanced tools and technology to better sell out professional sporting events, concerts and theaters. We’re proud to introduce this capability to a wider market of events and event holders, addressing this emerging ‘Long Tail’ of events. We are happy that Deccan Chargers team has benefited by using our solution and we would also like to take this opportunity to wish the Deccan Chargers a good series.â€
About AvenuesIncorporated in the year 2001, Avenues is a zero-debt company which has been profitable from its inception. Avenues has developed several innovative, cutting-edge ASP hosted solutions that are used by thousands of eMerchants globally. Their solution, EventAvenue, offers event managers a range of customized online event management tools designed to maximize the reach and profitability of their events. EventAvenue is a comprehensive web application to create, publish, advertise events and offer real time online registration and ticket booking with real time payments right from the organizers own website. EventAvenue automates almost all the work processes involved with managing the event and eliminates the problems associated with the traditional manual process viz. increased errors, higher administrative costs and longer execution times. For more information, visit: www.EventAvenue.com
About The Deccan Chronicle Group
The Deccan Chronicle is an English language newspaper simultaneously published in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamilnadu in India. The newspaper takes its name from its place of origination, the Deccan region of India. It is Hyderabad’s largest circulated daily and are the owners of the Indian Premier Leagues Cricket team called ‘Deccan Chargers”. For more information, visit: www.DeccanChargers.com .
About DLF Indian Premier League
The Indian Premier League (IPL) or DLF Indian Premier League is a Twenty20 cricket competition created by the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) and sanctioned by the International Cricket Council. This league consist of 8 teams – Mumbai Indians, Bangalore Royal Challengers, Chennai Super Kings, Delhi Daredevils, Deccan Chargers, Kolkata Knight Riders, Kings XI Punjab and Rajasthan Royals. These teams have a combination of Indian and International players. The IPL will function similarly to the English Premium League.
