HARARE – The Zimbabwe Football Association (ZIFA) is trialling an advance ticket system for national team matches.

Zimbabwe will play Congo Brazzaville at the National Sports Stadium on March 24 in a crucial African Nations Cup group match – and ZIFA says no tickets will be sold at the gates.

The move is aimed at improving ease of access to matches after sponsors and fans complained that entry into stadia was unnecessarily slow and incommodious.

ZIFA have appointed online payment platform, Clicknpay.Africa to sell their tickets. Fans can buy tickets through EcoCash, Telecash, Mastercard, Zimswitch bank transfer or VISA.

Fans without access to the online platform can buy their tickets physically from the ZIFA offices at 53 Livingstone Avenue in Harare.

Tickets bought on Clicknpay.Africa are delivered on e-mail, and fans can either print these or bring their devices with the electronic ticket to the stadium for scanning.

Fans will fork out $10 for the cheapest ticket. Bay 15-18 seats are $50 and VIP seats are a whopping $200.

CLICK HERE to buy your ticket

COMMENT: While the advance ticket system is noble, the online paying platform requires fans to have access to smartphones, or creates an extra burden and cost of finding a printer to print out the ticket.

A smarter solution is appointing reputable ticketing agents around the city where the match will be played, or indeed having a ZIFA ticket office in central Harare for the convenience of the fans.