Madness to see the Argentine national team: 1.5 million people disputed the 60,000 available tickets on the internet

2023-03-17

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Madness to see the Argentine national team: 1.5 million people disputed the 60,000 available tickets on the internet

Messi’s team plays its first game in Buenos Aires and the tickets sold out in 90 minutes

The enormous street celebration of the Argentines after obtaining the soccer world cup, last December, has just had its virtual chapter. If some six million people flooded the public space, that December 20, this time there were almost 1.5 million who tried to obtain their tickets to celebrate the Cup with the champions, on March 23. But, of course, the River Plate stadium only has 80,000 seats, of which almost 20% have been transferred in advance by the Federation (AFA) to companies, leaders, entertainment figures, influencers and relatives of the players. The match against Panama has been too small for an Argentina that, in the midst of oppressive heat and inflation that does not stop devouring pockets, anxiously awaits the moment of the reunion with the selected team.

The AFA also received 131,537 requests for journalistic accreditations. “The highest demand in history“, said its president, Claudio Tapia, on his Twitter account. “We would love to be able to meet everyone, but we would need two River stadiums, only for journalists. The madness for Argentina is total”. Again, as on the eve of the World Cup, with the sale of trading cards and televisions, and after the consecration, the word “madness” was used again to describe the passion.

For the match against Panama there were 131,537 requests for press credentials
It is the event with the greatest journalistic demand in history
We would love to be able to meet everyone, but we would need two River stadiums, only for journalists

madness for @Argentina it is total 🇦🇷🏆

— Chiqui Tapia (@tapiachiqui) March 14, 2023

Nicolás Casco told the newspaper The nation how he managed to get his seats at the River Plate stadium: used three computers and four cell phones to communicate with the Deportick website that the AFA had chosen as the ticket seller. Casco, 22, resorted to cunning to circumvent the digital limitations that left millions of people without the same possibility of shouting “give him champion” with the heroes of Qatar, with Leo Messi to the head. His place in the virtual “queue” was 4658, quite a feat considering that other Argentines and Argentines accessed numbers in the line that exceeded one million. The match against Panama alone should be repeated almost 20 times if you wanted to please everyone who entered Deportick. It didn’t take long for scalpers to appear on social media. They claimed exorbitant prices.

The expected overflow

Nobody was surprised by what happened in just 90 minutes, the approximate duration of a soccer game. The selected team will play a total of 10 games throughout 2023, six of them corresponding to the South American qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup. But nothing compared to the appointment on March 23, expected as the continuity of the carnival on December 20, when The players had to be taken out of the human tide in helicopters due to the impossibility of the bus that was taking them to reach the epicenter of the festivities, in the heart of the city of Buenos Aires.

“Seeing” the Cup for the first time in the hands of those who had taken it from France in a dramatic final was priceless and for this reason, the moment of ticket sales was awaited with collective anxiety. The available seats in the River Plate stadium sold out quickly between the suspense, the anxiety, the truncated longings and the exceptional achievements. Pablo León has been one of the lucky ones. “I waited patiently, without updating the website and almost without detaching myself from the compu (computer). I slept very little because of my nerves, but I am going to fulfill my dream of seeing Messi,” he told the official agency Telam.