The GAA has said that lessons will have to be learned from the outcry over the ticketing allocation for Saturday's Dublin-Mayo All-Ireland football semi-final.
Tickets for the game went on sale Tuesday morning at 10am, a day later than usual due to the August Bank Holiday and many fans were left disappointed despite spending hours queuing in various outlets and/or the GAA's online ticket outlet, tickets.ie.
Fine Gael TD Noel Rock said the 'chaos' could be a precursor to ticket touting at the weekend.
Virtual queues online were 20,000 long at a stage and the GAA’s Director of Communications Alan Milton insists it is a supply and demand issue, but that they would be discussing the matter further with their ticketing provider.
"The system yesterday was dealing with 82,300 tickets for Saturday and potentially 60,000 for Sunday. Within that, you had 7,000 season ticket holders for Saturday and somewhere in the region of half that for Sunday," he told RTÉ Radio 1’s Today with Miriam O’Callaghan.
"It was a big, big ask of the system."
"There are definitely learnings to be taken from yesterday. The key one for me, from the correspondence I have received personally, would be the queuing system online.
"People had issues with it and we need to speak to tickets.ie to find out whether or not there are issues, be that multiple browsers or people refreshing pages because it was very frustrating for people. And indeed for people in shops."
Milton said it is the biggest demand for tickets for an All-Ireland semi-final since 2012, when Mayo defeated Pat Gilroy's Dublin by three points at the penultimate stage.
"If you could sell 200,000 tickets for a fixture and you 82,000 to sell, you will still encounter the same difficulties and that is exactly what happened.
"The problem yesterday, or challenge, was the sheer demand for tickets for a finite resource of tickets. It wasn’t just in Dublin and Mayo, it was right across the 32 counties.
"What we will do is talk to tickets.ie and see if we can review any of the issues that arose."
Another allocation of tickets have gone on release today.
Rock says the current ticketing model isn’t fit for purpose, though doesn’t put all the blame at the door for the Association.
The idea that people were queuing in SuperValu around the country for hours at time, it seems to be a little bit backwards for 2019
"It’s quite clear that lot of people yesterday were either in person or online, left empty-handed. It seems that this kind of chaos is an initiation to ticket touting.
"It isn’t entirely the GAA’s fault. The question needs to be asked of ticketing partners and the ticketing providers. The idea that people were queuing in SuperValu around the country for hours at time, it seems to be a little bit backwards for 2019."
Follow Dublin v Mayo (Saturday, 5pm) and Kerry v Tyrone (Sunday, 3.30pm) via our live blogs on RTÉ.ie and the News Now app, watch live on RTÉ2 or listen to radio commentary on RTÉ Radio 1 and RTÉ Raidió na Gaeltachta.
