IPL founder and former chairperson Lalit Modi has hit out at the ICC for extreme ticket prices for the India-Pakistan game at the upcoming men’s T20 World Cup in America.
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The 2024 T20 World Cup is the first major ICC tournament involving top teams to be (partly) played in the United States of America. 16 of the 55 matches scheduled will be played in the USA, while the rest will be hosted across the West Indies.
Among the 16 games will be the marquee clash between India and Pakistan at the Nassau County International Cricket Stadium in New York, scheduled for June 9.
The anticipation for the game has been building for a long time, but with just over a couple of weeks to go for the game, the former IPL chairperson Lalit Modi has made some startling claims about the ticket pricing for the game by the ICC.
In a social media post, Modi has claimed that the ICC is charging US$20,000 per seat for an L2 South Diamond Club ticket, exposing ICC’s true intentions of making profits over expanding and growing the game in the US.
“Shocked to learn that @ICC is selling tickets for Diamond Club at $20000 per seat for the #indvspak WC game,” Modi wrote on X (Twitter). “The WC in the US is for game expansion & fan engagement, not a means to make profits on gate collections. $2750 for a ticket It’s just #notcricket #intlcouncilofcrooks.“
https://twitter.com/LalitKModi/status/1793422859832017012?t=SI6QbfsAPLu3z37VwDyddg&s=19
According to the ICC, however, the tickets for the India-Pakistan game range from $300 to $10,000. While most of them have been sold out on the official platforms, those tickets are now being sold on resale platforms like StubHub and SeatGeek for several times the original price.
Modi gave the example of IPL 2009 which was held in South Africa due to the Indian general elections. “I spent $100 million to get $5 million in gate money over 64 games in IPL 2009 in South Africa,” Modi wrote. “We sold tickets between $2 to $15 to build the game. We achieved history and case studies were written.”
The T20 World Cup starts on June 1 with the hosts USA taking on Canada. India will begin their campaign on June 5 against Ireland in New York before facing Pakistan for their second game.
