Bangla Press Desk: The hype was unlike anything seen in recent times.
Thousands of fans, excited at the rare chance to watch the national team play Singapore in a AFC Asian Cup qualifier at home – which will mark home debuts for Hamza Choudhury and Shamit Shome – were logged into the ticketing website from noon on Saturday.
The ticketing process was first rescheduled to 8 pm in the evening. Fans, frustrated, waited. As soon as it struck 8 on the clock, they flocked to the site Tickify.
What followed, however, was chaos.
The platform meant to bring convenience became a collective nightmare.
Fans took to social media, venting their frustration, sharing screenshots, and in some cases, joking about the absurdity of the situation — “From 501 to 505, crossed national borders to reach international error,” wrote one user.
Another said they tried 70–80 times per step, over four hours, before finally being able to buy a ticket.
“It was fine until the last step. Then I suddenly saw a different name and ID. I had to log out and re-do the whole thing to buy my ticket,” said another.
Tech trouble or targeted attack?
Tickify, the online ticketing platform, later claimed a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack overwhelmed their servers with more than 150,000 unexpected requests.
However, Daily Sun has learned that the majority of the suspicious traffic triggering the platform’s collapse reportedly came from the Badda and Banani areas in Dhaka — raising questions about the nature and intent of the attack, and whether it was actually a coordinated disruption or simply a lack of preparation for a predictable spike in traffic.
The platform, rated 2.3 out of 5 on Google, has previously come under fire for messy ticketing experiences — something that only added to the scepticism around this latest incident.
They had announced they were able to handle the load, but in reality, they failed big time.
Lack of testing, lack of communication
“We didn’t realise how much people love football. It is unbelievable, we didn’t expect this,” he told Daily Sun.
When asked whether Tickify or BFF ran stress tests or had contingency plans in place before the ticketing window opened, he said he wasn’t aware.
On repeated questions about prior communication and whether enough was done to ensure system stability, Gaus kept referring to Sunday’s update — “We informed everything in detail today.”
Tickify, for their part, did not respond to multiple calls and messages.
During their press conference on 21 May, company officials appeared unsure about basic policies — such as how many tickets a person can buy per ID — reflecting a general unreadiness.
The end result: thousands of fans left in the dark, while both organisations scrambled to save face.
A broken system, but the hype is undeniable
Despite all the frustration and mismanagement, this episode has made one thing clear: the appetite for football in Bangladesh is real, raw, and rising.
The Sunday evening update announced that tickets for the 4 June practice match between Bangladesh and Bhutan were now available, and tickets for the much-anticipated Singapore clash would be released again after Tickify’s maintenance is complete.
But as of filing this report, neither event was properly live, and fans continued to report confusion.
Still, this kind of demand is rare — and valuable.
Earlier this year, the Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) had a similarly disastrous ticketing rollout for the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL). But the process improved over time, and the tournament ended with record-breaking revenue from ticket sales.
The difference was in how they responded and learned.
For football, the context may differ, but the lesson remains: hype is not enough.
Systems need to be ready. Planning must be proactive, not reactive. Otherwise, passion will keep running into 504 errors. Source: DS
[Bangla Press is a global platform for free thought. It provides impartial news, analysis, and commentary for independent-minded individuals. Our goal is to bring about positive change, which is more important today than ever before.]
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