UEFA Super Cup ticket sales potentially sabotaged, says official

A top Georgian Football Federation official is calling on law enforcement agencies to investigate potential cases of sabotaging ticket sales to the much-anticipated Barcelona-Seville football match. 

Georgian Football Federation Secretary General Revaz Arveladze has urged law enforcement agencies to look into the selling of ticket sales to the UEFA Super Cup match to be held in Tbilisi on August 11.

Today Arveladze said the Georgian Football Federation did not exclude the possibility that outsiders had tried to artificially create problems with the ticket selling process. 

"It is [imperative] for the whole Georgia that the game is held at a high level. The Federation calls on law enforcement agencies to clarify this issue, if necessary. If it is something more than a technical issue, then they should help us. If there are signs of sabotage, it should be investigated and revealed,” he said.

The Georgian Football Federation representative also noted that tickets had not been sold at the expected rate. Latest information revealed only 1,220 tickets of 24,000 available were sold today.

Ticket sales for the highly anticipated Barcelona–Sevilla game was postponed last week when www.biletebi.ge, the website responsible for selling the tickets, crashed when ten thousand fans tried to access it.

After several days of negotiations between the website owners, the Georgian Football Federation and UEFA, it was announced that ticket sales for Georgian fans would resume at 9am this morning on the same website. However, today most visitors had difficulties accessing the website and buying tickets.

The match will take place at the Boris Paichadze Dinamo Arena in Tbilisi on Tuesday, August 11.