By Aaron Stuckel

Grey Cup festival pass system causes confusion and disappointment

Nov 23, 2013 | 2:51 PM

The Grey Cup committee had some explaining to do on Saturday after a large number of football fans were unable to purchase passes to team events on Friday night.

At about 6 p.m., a twitter message was sent out by 101st Grey Cup saying that passes were no longer being sold at both the Underground Tent or the Energy Zone, leaving anyone without a pass to find a different place to go.
Many angry revellers questioned why they would shut down pass sales when most of the venues (besides Riderville) had yet to fill up.

“We had a number of pre-sold tickets that we wanted to accommodate for,” said executive director with the Grey cup Committee Neil Donnelly at a news conference Saturday morning. “At the same time, we had long lines at Riderville. So those lines count towards our capacity.”

Tweets sent out Friday night by the Grey Cup Committee explained that they may re-opening sales at 7 p.m. When CJME called, communications personnel explained that nothing had changed. They would not be selling tickets Friday night.

However, on Saturday Donnelly said that they did sell more tickets later in the evening after some events cleared out.

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“The reality is that it’s very cold weather outside. We cannot accommodate line-ups outside. There’s not enough room inside for line-ups,” said Donnelly. “We don’t want mass quantities of people coming down here thinking they are going to be able to get in. It’s just going to be on a case-by-case scenario as we monitor capacities and admissions that we may take into consideration selling a few more passes.”

Meanwhile, thousands of people lined up to get tickets for the day’s festivities early on Saturday morning—many of them waiting outside—in hopes that they could get tickets before they sold out.

With all the confusion and disappointment caused to football fans, Donnelly said he doesn’t regret using the pass system for the festival, as opposed to simple admission.

“The feedback we had was that a lot of people would like to experience other pavilions but didn’t want to pay the admission every time. So we created this festival pass idea,” he said. “Overall, I think it’s a benefit for the festival. I think it’s a benefit for all the teams here. If we didn’t have this, we would just have long line-ups for Riderville and the other team rooms sitting empty.”

Donnelly said they would likely have to look at limiting pass sales on Saturday as well.

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