By Nelson Opany & Calisto Ochieng
We travelled to Egypt for work but were also keen to take some time off to watch a game of football between Kenya and Tunisia at the CAF Under 20 Africa Cup of Nations Championship that was being played on 4th May 2025 at the 30th June Air Defense Stadium in Cairo. We even purchased the Harambee Stars away kits from the official suppliers EastWest Fashions and had our names proudly printed at the back. We were very excited as avid football fans. We mobilised four other colleagues we were travelling with and hatched a plan.
The Excitement
While at JKIA our eyes caught the Football Kenya Federation (FKF) President Hussein Mohammed who was also travelling to go for the games. We reached out for a handshake and shared with him the excitement at the possibility of catching the game together later that day. “Jambo Mr President, tupatane game leo jioni,” we said as we went past the immigration counter through to the security checkpoint.
A few days before our travel, we went online to check the details of the match hoping to find information about the ticketing process – how much they costed, where to buy them and the payment process. Surprisingly, none of this information was publicly available. Disappointed, we reached out to an Egyptian colleague in Cairo to help us get information, and he agreed to check for us.
We arrived in Cairo at 08:00am with the game scheduled for 06:00pm. Our colleague came up to us and handed us over to another Tunisian colleague who was also planning to attend the match and would help me get the tickets. Luckily, for him he had everything sorted as he’d lived in Cairo for atleast three years. He walked us through the process and we thought to ourselves, “this should be quick.” Little did we know how frustrating it would be.
The Agony
We took a twenty-minutes walk to a Telecom Egypt (WE) service centre, similar to what would be a Safaricom Service Centre in Kenya. There we learnt of the process which involved multiple steps as follows:
Complete an online application for what they call a “Fan ID” on an e-ticketing platform Tazkarti. Apparently this is a requirement for everyone accessing any stadia in the country whether for a sporting or entertainment event. It was introduced for ease of identification of stadia users after previous incidents of hooliganism and violence. The ID costs EGP 120 (approximately KES 307) and is renewable annually.
The application has to then be approved remotely by the Tazkarti Service Centre staff over an unknown timeline. You’d be lucky enough if it gets approved before ticket sales close. Those who’ve used the system before have phone lines they call to quicken the approval process. Our Egyptian colleague helped us by calling and we got response in one and a half hours.
Upon approval, a notification with an ID and password are sent to the email address you provided on registration. You must then log back in with the credentials to complete your profile. Unlucky for you if your application had errors or if for some reason the login details don’t work – you’d get stuck there, just four of our colleagues, unable to proceed as the Tazkarti Service Centre became unresponsive even after numerous calls. Their applications had errors that they were not able to address in time, even with a visit to the WE Service Centre and calls to the Tazkarti Service Centre.
The two of us were lucky to successfully log in and complete our profiles and then tried to purchase the tickets online, while back at our hotel, only to realise that the preferred paymnent methods available was the local mobile money wallet Fawry. We rushed back to the WE Service Centre to seek assistance. We got stuck here with an attendant who only spoke Arabic and could not even understand our request.
For those who succeed in paying the fees, you have to physically go back to the WE Service Centre to have your Fan ID printed. Only after getting this far, can you proceed to buy the tickets.
To buy the tickets you have to log back into the Tazkarti platform, select the game you want to attend, your preferred team and ticket category for seating allocation. The tickets for the CAF U20 AFCON went for EGP 150 (approximately KES 384) and would have to also be paid for through the mobile wallet. The good thing though was that one ticket gave you access to the two games being played at the stadium on that particular day. The ticket sales would close two hours before kick-off with no extension whatsoever or an option to buy tickets at the venue.
The Disappointment
By 04:00pm none of us managed to secure the tickets as four got stuck at step three and two at step four. In a frantic attempt to look for an alternative, but without much expectation, one of us went to Facebook and messaged the FKF President to check if there could be tickets with the federation delegation onsite that we could use to enter the stadium, but this was unsuccessful.
We had to miss the game yet the stadium was only twenty minutes away from our hotel, and we had purposely left that evening free to go watch the match. To make things worse, the free live broadcast on CAFTV’s YouTube channel was only available outside Egypt. We were left to follow updates online, which wasn’t interesting at all. Kenya’s Rising Stars ended up exiting the championship in the group stage having lost 2-3 to Morocco, 1-3 to Tunisia and drawn 2-2 with Nigeria.
The Lessons and Recommendations
This experience provides many lessons for organisers of such large international sporting events. On a positive note, it showed that we can actually have elaborate systems to manage access to our stadia as a measure for stemming the potential misconduct of stadium goers like that which we often witness in the Kenya Premier League. This is although contingent on the existence of proper stadium infrastructure and efficiency in service delivery. On the flipside, as a foreigner without knowledge of local systems and processes, it can be very frustrating if systemic inefficiencies derail your efforts to enjoy a game you travelled so far to go experience live.
With Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda geared to host CHAN 2025 in August and AFCON 2027 competitions, a lot can be learned about how to make the ticketing process more accessible, straightforward and efficient, particularly for foreign fans coming into the country.
The host football federations must design a unified fan registration and ticketing system to not only save time but also make the experience smoother. The approval processes and timelines should also be cut to the minimum and if possible automated to allow realtime confirmations. Digital ticketing could be implemented to avoid the mandatory use of printed tickets and replaced by digital QR code scanners. The payment systems must be multiple and international recognized to allow seamless integration of cross-country options like credit and debit cards. Clear and consistent communication about the ticketing process must be done in advance of the tournament and before each game. The personnel hired to support these processes also need to be well trained and empowered for timely and efficient fan support services in case of any hitches. For foreign federations, the least they can do is to commuciate to their nationals the ticketing information for all their games and provide dedicated contact persons to offer ticketing and other support to their travelling fans. Customer experience in sporting events is something federations can learn from the business sector.
For fans planning to attend international competitions on foreign soil, early planning is important. They should identify the games they intend to attend and make effort to find the ticketing information well in advance. If at all they can’t find the information, they must seek out their federation for support.
Conclusion
For so long, large sporting events in many African countries have been treated majorly as social gatherings and not as serious enterprises managed using proven business processes and standards. This not only keeps fans away from the stadia but also chokes the massive business potential they possess. It is our hope that the East Africa Pamoja Bid for hosting CHAN 2025 and AFCON 2027 will realise this and go all out to provide very high level customer experience for the millions of fans who will be getting into planes, ships, trains, motor vehicles, bicycles or even walking from thousands of kilometers worldwide to come experience these continental football showpieces.
Photos courtesy of The Harambee Stars