What sparked the displeasure of the fans?
Referee Tobias Stieler blew the whistle in Dortmund at 5:27 p.m. last Saturday. Hertha lost 2-1 to BVB, while Stuttgart beat Cologne in the last minute and sent the Berliners into the relagtion. Just one hour later, at around 6:30 p.m., advance ticket sales for members for the first leg of the relegation in the Olympic Stadium (Thursday, 8:30 p.m.) started.
This is where the supporters’ displeasure began. Because first of all, the season ticket holders and those who had secured the five-game package for the final spurt of the season were asked to buy new tickets for the game. Concerned that their season tickets would not be valid in the relegation, some fans responded to the call.
How did the situation develop?
After some Hertha fans expressed their frustration on social networks, the club backtracked at 8:12 p.m. that same evening and declared that season tickets or five-game packages would remain valid in the relegation. The problem: Some of the fans had long since purchased additional tickets.
At around 10 p.m., season ticket holders received a code by email from the club that entitled them to select a free ticket in the online shop. The situation seemed to calm down. The fans assumed they could use the free tickets to bring more blue and white supporters to the Olympic Stadium to ensure maximum support. There had already been such free ticket campaigns on the last days of the season.
What the club apparently didn’t communicate sufficiently for some of the fans was that season ticket holders should use the code to get their own ticket. Because parallel to the start of free sales on Monday afternoon, Hertha published the information that the season tickets alone would not entitle you to enter the Olympic Stadium for the first leg against HSV.
Some of the Hertha fans with season tickets, who had counted on getting to the stadium as usual, were now without a ticket because they had already passed on their codes. Since the free sale was already running, some of their original seats had already been sold and they now had to switch to other seats in the Olympic Stadium.
How did Hertha BSC react?
On Twitter, Hertha’s Finance Director Ingo Schiller reacted to the anger of a fan and admitted mistakes:
When asked by rbb, Hertha also said that there had been an internal error in the plan to start and communicate ticket sales as early as possible on Saturday evening. We apologized for this and corrected the situation immediately.
What are the worries about free advance sales?
Due to the problems in member and season ticket holder sales and the early start of free sales, many Hertha supporters were worried that an extremely large number of HSV fans could get tickets in neutral blocks and that a similar scenario could be experienced in the Olympic Stadium , as was the case with Frankfurt’s away game in Barcelona. Around 25,000 Eintracht supporters managed to get tickets at Camp Nou there.
Hertha made it clear to rbb that season ticket holders and members had an exclusive pre-sale right for up to eight tickets from Saturday evening until Monday at 12 noon. Then the free sale began because not all tickets had been sold by then. This process was not unusual and similar to other games – for example in the derby against Union.
Can an invasion of HSV fans be expected?
On Monday afternoon, all 7,500 tickets from the guest contingent were sold out within a few minutes. However, the official fan club of Hamburger SV “HSV Inside” assumes that significantly more supporters will find their way from the Hanseatic city to Berlin on Thursday. After the start of free sales, many Hamburgers could have secured a ticket in the surrounding blocks around the guest area.
Whether the number of 35,000 HSV fans is realistic remains questionable. On Monday evening it was still possible to buy tickets in the upper tier next to the guest block. So these weren’t completely sold out yet.
But it will definitely be full. There are only a few tickets left in the entire stadium. On Monday there were only free seats in the upper tiers, especially in the main and opposite grandstands.
Broadcast: rbb24, May 16, 2022, 9:45 p.m
Source: rbb