THE Cebu Schools Athletic Foundation Inc. (Cesafi) finals series may have been seen by fewer audiences this year but according to commissioner Felix Tiukinhoy, their revenues from gate receipts are the same as in the past year.

“The basketball competition still earned this year. It was enough to subsidize for the other events,” said Tiukinhoy.

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As the most popular among the Cesafi events, basketball has been the league’s breadwinner with the gate receipts enough to cover for extra cost the other events needed.

Just like last year, the best-of-five finals series reached four games. However, the Coliseum was not filled like last year.

Last year, people complained that they could barely breathe because the coliseum was crammed all through the rafters.

This year, the general admission box was empty and was only occupied toward the end of the game.

Tiukinhoy blamed the dwindling number of viewers to the schedule and said it had nothing to do with lack of interest.

“There were so many games from other leagues held at the Cebu Coliseum this season so we had to adjust our schedules countless of times and we wound up having our semifinals during the finals exam and the finals during the semestral break,” Tiukinhoy said.

Tiukinhoy added that to show that people are still interested, the lower box and upper box—where paying audience watch—were filled.

“These aren’t just students rooting for their schools’ teams but basketball fans who want to watch quality basketball games. It shows just how the Cesafi fan base is growing,” said Tiukinhoy.

Tiukinhoy added the league had to resort to new procedures at the gates this year to prevent scalpers from selling fake tickets.

The biggest problem Cesafi had to deal with last year was the production of fake tickets that were sold outside the gate and tickets re-used by other people.

“We added more personnel at the gate and we had separate entrances and exits for every ticket. It was definitely more orderly this year and it minimized chances of re-using the tickets,” he added.