Cascadia Summit Ticketing Shambles, But Whitecaps Allocation NOT Sold Out

“You don’t know what you’re doing. You don’t know what you’re doing”.

That pretty much sums up how many Vancouver Whitecaps and Seattle Sounders fans felt about their team’s front offices after the ticketing shambles that developed this morning for the pre-season Cascadia Summit tournament in March.

There was much fanfare and all three Clubs championed the tournament when it was announced last month.

A few weeks later and trying to get tickets for the games has been a real pain in the ass for Seattle and Vancouver fans, with no-one owning up to responsibility as to where it all went wrong.

Vancouver fans were told that we were getting 1300 tickets for the Portland game on Saturday March 5th and 500 for the Seattle game the following day. Since then, the Whitecaps front office has been very quiet on the matter, despite tickets going on sale this morning.

Portland fans, who were promised the same ticketing allocations for their games, have had an altogether different experience with their front office. In fact, the Timbers helped the 107ist Supporters Trust secure their allocation, so that they didn’t have to go through the hassle of trying to get tickets this morning.

The Vancouver Southsiders supporters group were not able to secure group tickets before this general sale through the aid of the Whitecaps and today faced an arduous slog where they were passed from Ticketmaster to the Sounders to Starfire and then back to Ticketmaster before eventually being able to snap up just 50 tickets for the Seattle game. Portland tickets were then secured with the help of Portland’s Timbers Army. A huge thanks though to the Portland fans for making this happen.

Seattle fans had even more problems and since they’re technically hosting the tournament (since their US Open Cup games are played at Starfire), that’s even more unbelievable.

Two-game packages, seemed so few in number that they appeared not to exist. The Sounders say otherwise but that demand was so much for the Timbers game that they sold out making two game packages unavailable.

Many Sounders fans found themselves disappointed and unable to get tickets. You can bet though that a number of tickets were snapped up by clever Timbers fans, who not only secured their allocation but added to it in the free-for-all that was the general sale. It will be a real embarrassment for the Sounders if they are outnumbered by Timbers fans in their own stadium.

The way the sale was handled though throws up more pressing questions as far as I’m concerned.

Tickets are “general admission” and Ticketmaster did not specifiy whether you were buying tickets as a Sounders, Timbers or Whitecaps fan. What was the point in limiting allocations if fans could buy any amount that they wanted this way?

Since the front offices have previously expressed concerns regarding crowd trouble at the Cascadia derbies, why would the Seattle and Vancouver front offices not want to make sure that the tickets got into reputable hands. Worse case scenario, and hopefully unlikely, but these tickets could find their way into the hands of people hell bent on causing trouble and it will be the supporters groups that will be blamed for it. This could have huge implications on future ticket allocations.

Tickets have already made their way on to ebay, with one seller selling the $10 tickets for the Caps-Timbers game for $60 and $80 for the Sounders game. Incredible.

Whitecaps fans would never have taken the full 500 and 1300 allocations in the first place, so why did the Caps front office not get involved to help facilitate things early like the Timbers FO did?

Well we made some enquiries and AFTN can exclusively reveal that although the two Whitecaps games have sold out on Ticketmaster, this does NOT include the Caps ticketing allocations.

The Whitecaps are still finalising the details and should have more info available by Friday. If you’re looking at going, then I would try and get your tickets through the Southsiders first of all, but if they sell out then ask your Caps ticket rep.

We reiterate. These games are not sold out for Caps fans at present.

Why the Whitecaps have not made an official statement before now is a mystery. Now’s the time for them to do that. The Sounders front office have made TWO official statements on the fiasco now.

If only they’d kept the fans in the loop, it would have prevented a LOT of hassle this morning.

There’s Nothing Quite Like A Derby

There’s nothing quite like a ‘derby’ game. Whether it’s the Old Firm game in Glasgow, Spurs-Arsenal in London, the Milan derby (although I’ve always found the Rome derby a lot more interesting and exciting), they’re renowned around the world, the fans just love them and the atmosphere’s are usually electric.

As the years have moved on it’s been interesting to see how derbies and local rivalries have developed across the world and how different fans view different games.

Looking at Fife, for example, East Fife’s traditional local rivals, and main derby game, have always been Raith Rovers. With the 20 odd year gap when we didn’t face each other, East Fife fans have had to make do with the “pretend” derby against Cowdenbeath. We’ve got that back again this year, whilst Raith have moved on to their other Fife derby against Dunfermline Athletic. Both match ups were played out on Saturday to very different crowd numbers and atmospheres.

Opinion is split amongst the Raith support. Some, especially the younger ones who haven’t been used to anything else and still foolishly think of Raith Rovers as a “big” club, consider Rovers-Pars to be the main Fife derby. Others still know that it’s East Fife-Raith.

Dunfermline supporters don’t really care about Raith. They view their main local rivals to be outside of the Kingdom, in the shape of Falkirk. There’s real hatred there, again based on more recent games and exploits. When East Stirling still played in Falkirk, a Shire-Bairns match wouldn’t have got the juices running in any way, shape or form for the vast majority.

Such anomalies are found all across Scotland and England and it’s not inter town/city/county rivalries that matter as much any more. Liverpool-Man United generates more hatred and fervour than either Liverpool-Everton or United-City, although the latter will have added spice from this season once again. It’s always the “smaller” of the two Clubs that love the same hometown derby games it always appears.

Nottingham is a great example. Forest-County matters to the County fans, whereas Forest are more concerned with Derby County (although the Rams fans obviously have a Derby game every week!)

Saturday’s match up between the Rams and Forest was an absolute cracker. If anyone hasn’t seen it, try and get hold of highlights from somewhere. The passion on display on and off the pitch was electric. The fans cared. The management cared. The players cared – as was demonstrated by the stramash at the end of the game when Derby players took offence to Forest’s Nathan Tyson waving a celebratory corner flag past the Derby support. Five goals, hard tackling, total commitment. It’s what fans want and need from their players in such matches and something that was sadly missing from East Fife’s game against Cowdenbeath on Saturday.

On a worldwide stage, the biggest game for me is the Barcelona – Real Madrid game. It’s another example of regional rivalry taking over from inter city rivalry, but it doesn’t lose anything in the process. I don’t take too much interest in La Liga, but always make a point of watching these two combatants fight it out.

North America is so far behind this culture but it is certainly changing.

When Vancouver and Portland join the MLS in 2011, there’s some mouthwatering derby games in prospect. Portland and Seattle in particular is shaping up to be a tasty encounter for years to come. There’s real hatred between these two Pacific northwest cities on many levels. Portland fans have already set up ACES – Any Club Except Seattle. It’s a brilliant concept and I love it. It’s creating real football rivalry and as long as things don’t boil over into West Ham-Millwall type scenes (although I do have a feeling that it might!), then it’s all good, clean fun.

The media in North America are the ones that have a key part to play in developing these rivalries. As long as they let them grow and not expect Vancouver fans to cheer on Toronto, as they expected earlier this season, then the game will grow with it. It just needs journalists who “get it”.

In the meantime, I can only wait now for Hallowe’en and our next third rate derby encounter. Still, it’s better than nothing!