Yesterday, the BCCI on the request of DDCA agreed to push the India vs New Zealand ODI by a day i.e. from September 19 to 20 as DDCA showed its incapability to host the ODI on Karva Chauth day, a festival celebrated in Northern part of India.
The question is why BCCI accepted the request of DDCA as there is a there is no bank holiday on this day. Neither any state nor central government declares a holiday. Then why BCCI accepted the DDCA request?
The reason for pushing the game by a day is directly related to finance.
On 11 October 2014, Indian team played an ODI against West Indies at Feroz Shah Kotla and guess what it was a Karva Chauth day. It was reported that DDCA suffered huge loss due to that.
There was a fall in sale of tickets and also the food stall owners who purchased the tenders for that game suffered huge losses. The fall in sale of tickets was due to the fact that all the married men will obviously like to spend the day with the wife instead of reaching to the ground at 2:30 P.M. when the sun is shining at its peak. There was a drop in the sale of tickets by 20-30 % mainly due to this reason.
Generally the ticket price range from 500-1000 for the general stands. The cost of the ground level ticket is Rs. 1000 whereas tickets of the first floor and second-floor art available at half rate. Many empty seats were seen at the ground floor even after the completion of the half game. The people sitting at the upper floors took advantage and came to the ground floor to have the better view of the match. These were the scenes at Feroz Shah Kotla on that day.
Due to the low sale of tickets DDCA incurred huge losses as a board earns most of its income from the sale of tickets.
The second reason was the low sale of food items at food stall because of the same reason. First, there were fewer crowds at the stadium and second obvious reason is that a married man would love to have dinner with his wife on that day instead of eating at his stadium.
The pity of food stall owners was clearly seen as the food stalls which earlier used to be surrounded by a swarm of people throughout the match were seen empty. Only a few people reached out to them, yes there was a big crowd at food stall during innings break but that too fled away when the match started.
A 200 ml Coca-Cola glass which cost Rs. 100-150 in an IPL game was easily available at Rs. 50 on that day. The price even dropped to 40 as the game passed.
The pity of food stall owners can be adjudged by the price rate only. They were suffering a loss of Rs. 70-80 per glass.
Taking a lesson from past experience the BCCI felt that it is better to push the game instead of incurring losses. This will also give a chance to recently married players to spend the auspicious day with their wives.
So, in short, the push of the game has benefited BCCI, DDCA, and the Indian players as well.