The City Government of Bacolod will require the Bacolod Yuhum Foundation to answer the complaints of the ticket holders of the PBA All-Star Games held at the University of St. La Salle (USLS) Coliseum over the weekend.
They were allegedly denied entry on Sunday, March 24.
Lawyer Caesar Distrito, spokesperson of Mayor Alfredo Abelardo Benitez, said they were informed that they were denied access because the venue was allegedly fully occupied.
"We will ask the foundation because it's a private foundation that handled the event and not the city government," he said.
On Sunday evening, a long queue of ticket holders was seen outside the university and they were demanding a refund of their tickets from the organizer after they were not able to get inside the venue.
Bacolod Yuhum Foundation in a statement released to the media on Monday evening, March 25, stated that the closure of the gates during the PBA All-Star Games at the USLS Coliseum was a joint decision of both Bacolod Yuhum Foundation and the USLS Coliseum Management as stipulated in their contract.
Closure of the gates happened around 6:30 p.m. when the official game started.
In all their posters and ticket-selling booths, there were reminders issued. Among those was a reminder that gates will open by 1 p.m. and will close when the game starts.
The foundation said that these reminders were also posted on their social media page since March 17.
"Which means, those who were denied entry came in very late. Both USLS and Bacolod Yuhum can attest, through the CCTV cameras in the Coliseum, that when the decision to close the gates happened, just about when the game started, nobody was outside the gates anymore," the foundation said.
It is also not true that ticket holders were denied entry because the Coliseum was already at full capacity because Bacolod Yuhum Foundation had 500 tickets left that were not disposed of before the game started, the foundation added.*