If you’ve tried to buy a ticket for CHAN 2024 in Kenya, chances are you’ve felt like you were wrestling with a boss level in a video game. Sometimes the online portal is down just when Harambee Stars are playing. Other times you hear whispers of physical tickets floating around in cars and booklets. And to make matters worse, if you don’t own a smartphone, you’re basically locked out of the stadium party.
CAF had promised us a slick, paperless, online ticketing system. Reality? Not so smooth. So where did the plot twist?
To make sense of it all, NTV’s Bernard Ndong and James Wokabi pulled in an expert: Nkaari Martin, a man who has been in the trenches of Kenyan football ticketing since the KPL glory days. His take? The tech is fine, but the execution and culture around it are where the cracks show.
1. The Illusion of “Paperless”
CAF went all-in on online-only ticketing, and while that sounds futuristic, Martin points out that it can actually complicate game-day logistics.
Here’s why:
- Scanning phones isn’t enough – A steward or police officer can’t immediately tell if your PDF on WhatsApp is valid until it’s scanned. With 30,000 fans, that’s already a bottleneck.
- No instant visual cues – In many global tournaments, fans still get physical tickets or wristbands with color codes. That way, security can glance at you and know where you belong. Without that, every check requires a scan.
In fact, Martin argues, physical doesn’t have to mean “old school.” Think high-tech wristbands or QR-coded stubs that double as visual IDs. Your eyes catch a red wristband faster than a QR code on someone’s cracked screen.
2. Accessibility: The Forgotten Fans
Tech works only if it’s universal. Martin bluntly calls out CAF here: by going smartphone-only, the system locked out a chunk of Kenya’s regular football crowd. “You’ll be surprised by the number of people who don’t have a smartphone,” Martin said.
Smartphone penetration in Kenya stands at 50% of the population, as Safaricom CEO recently pointed out. And as per the CA, there are 37.5 million feature phone users in Kenya. That means the die-hard fan who has supported the game since 2005 but still uses a kabambe can’t get in. Meanwhile, scalpers with smartphones can hoard digital tickets and resell them in physical form. According to Martin, a simple USSD option (think buying airtime) could have solved this. Buy ticket → get code → show SMS at gate → scan → boom, inside. Kenya has done this with banking, M-PESA, and even electricity tokens. Why not football?
3. Safety Culture Remains Our Achilles Heel
Martin makes a sobering point: Kenya doesn’t have a safety culture. Not on the roads, not in schools, and not in stadiums. This lack of culture means every loophole in tech systems is magnified. A fake ticket here, poor communication there, and suddenly crowd control is chaos.
At one match, over 1,000 police officers were deployed for 27,000 fans. That’s one cop for every 27 people. But most of those officers weren’t trained for crowd control, just general policing. Compare that to countries where stadium staff, stewards, and fans have learned protocols over decades. In Europe, they can fill a 90,000-seater stadium in 30 minutes because both organizers and fans “know the drill.”
4. Communication is Everything
This might be the tech industry’s favorite cliché, but it applies perfectly here. Fans knew what they couldn’t bring to Kasarani (bottles, lighters, vuvuzelas, etc.), but many didn’t know basic info like:
- Which gate leads to which section
- How to navigate once inside
- What to do if your digital ticket fails
As Martin says, “I haven’t seen a map of Kasarani up to now.” Imagine buying a digital ticket that says Block G but gives you zero clue how to actually find Block G. A smarter system would deliver directions with the ticket: “You’re in Section G. Use Gate 3. Follow the green signs.” Simple, but powerful.
5. Fast Learning, But Will It Stick?
To be fair, things have improved match by match. Scanners were deployed at multiple checkpoints, fake tickets got rejected instantly, and the entry flow at later games was smoother. But here’s the warning: Kenya has a history of “forgetting lessons.” A great setup at CHAN may not carry over to regular FKF Premier League matches, where there won’t be 1,000 cops or CAF’s pressure.
Martin puts it bluntly: “Experience tends to expire with time in Kenyan football.”
6. The Ideal Future
So what does “good” look like? Martin paints a hybrid solution:
- Online + USSD + physical → A universal ticketing ecosystem that leaves no fan behind.
- High-tech physical tokens → Wristbands or color-coded stubs for visual verification.
- Better comms baked into tickets → Maps, directions, prohibited items list.
- Trained stewards, not just police → Crowd control is a skill, not just manpower.
- Culture building → Fans learn the process, organizers build trust, and football becomes safer.
So no, the CHAN ticketing system wasn’t a total disaster. It was a bold experiment that exposed Kenya’s gaps in digital readiness, safety culture, and communication. The tech worked sometimes. The problem was making it work for everyone.
As Martin puts it: ticketing should be universal. Whether you’re holding an iPhone 16 Pro Max, a kabambe with a torch, or a printed stub from a cyber café, you should be able to scan in, find your seat, and scream your lungs out for Kenya.
Because at the end of the day, football isn’t about the online system. It’s about the atmosphere.
You can watch the full video below:
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