Only 1 000 tickets will be available when Cape Umoya United host Ajax Cape Town at the Cape Town Stadium in their first ever home fixture since being established, due to a temporary stadium crisis gripping Cape Town.
The city is left with a temporary shortage of playing venues due to the unavailability of Athlone Stadium, where work is being carried out to fix issues with water pumps connected to the field with the pitch in an unplayable condition.
Ajax Cape Town confirmed that the City of Cape Town was bending over backwards to aid all Mother City teams in hosting their scheduled fixtures.
"We needed to make arrangements with the Cape Town Stadium management with there not being a suitable venue in Cape Town besides that stadium," the club said.
"Athlone Stadium should be ready hopefully soon, then the ticket situation will change. But at Cape Town Stadium the more numbers there are the bigger the costs as for instance the more security needed.
"The bottom line is it is cost related but also an agreement with the stadium as they're going out of their way to accommodate NFD games now which is a first for the venue."
Tuesday's hosts, Cape Umoya said that the allocation of only 1 000 tickets is a directive from the league, which it has a deal in place with to manage the current venue shortage.
"It's because the NFD has a certain budget and Cape Town Stadium only allocated us the use of one lounge so it was completely out of our control," Cape Umoya said.
"We will have one lounge and the stand in front of it which holds a maximum of 1 000 people so we were basically told 'you will play on this day at this time and you will be allowed to have so many people'."
NFD sides Ajax Cape Town , Ubuntu Cape Town , Cape Umoya United and Stellenbosch FC are all expecting to utilise Athlone as their home ground, alongside Cape Town City , when the Cape Town Stadium is unavailable, along with former PSL champions Santos, who now compete in the ABC Motsepe League.
PSL chief operations officer Professor Ronnie Schloss previously said: "At present we don't have a stadium to use in Cape Town outside of the Cape Town Stadium. Parow Park (used by Cape Town All Stars last season) is not compliant at the moment either. So we are talking to the council to see what we can do."
Source: Sport24
