Good luck scoring a golden ticket!

Football fans have marked their calendars for a pink-letter day: on February 4, football megastar Lionel Messi and his Inter Miami teammates will play a friendly with the Hong Kong select team in Hong Kong Stadium.

It is a highly anticipated event, promising good business for the tourism sector.

But it is also a challenge for most local football fans because they will have to first deal with a hurdle that will prove very difficult to overcome this coming Friday when the tickets will be released for public sale around the world.

Those keen to be among the 40,000 spectators on February 4 will have to punch their keyboards to compete with millions around the world for a ticket expected to fetch up to HK$4,880 apiece – enough to buy 1.25 grams of gold at yesterday’ price.

Even though the organizers say a large number of the 40,000 seats of the stadium will be made available via public sale, it is certain the tickets priced from HK$880 to HK$4,880 will be sold out in a matter of minutes if the exclusive ticketing platform Klook is able to handle millions of nearly simultaneous entries.

Although the match will be an exciting event for Hong Kong, bear in mind there are always two sides of the same coin and both the government and organizers are obliged to plan for the unexpected.

First, a large number of local football fans are bound to be upset given that Hong Kong Stadium is considered their home ground.

It is common practice to reserve a certain number of tickets for the hosting venue even though commercial consideration may be allowed to take precedence, as organizers of similar events have sometimes confessed.

The Football Association of Hong Kong has been frank about the commercial aspects this time.

Messi and Inter Miami have agreed to come here for a price – a figure that has dropped many a jaw.

According to the association, it is paying the visiting team US$8 million to US$10 million (HK$62.4 million to HK$7.8 million) to secure Messi and other prominent teammates to launch the football club’s first international tour in Hong Kong.

Having signed a contract to pay them such a high price, should the football association here have a greater say in ticket allocation rather than using it as an excuse for not doing so?

Football is a commercial business as much as a sport.

Would superstar Messi and David Beckham’s football club agree to play here for anything less?

My guess is as good as that of any football fan.

Then, in the wake of the scarcity of the tickets, scalping is an almost predictable inevitability.

No matter how much the ticketing agent boasts about the security of its digital tickets that would make it difficult for scalpers to resell the tickets in the illicit market, there is a common understanding that every time a technology is innovated it is inevitably breached.

As an old saying goes, the devil is 10-feet tall and it takes vigilance to stave it off.

As said, tickets go on sale this Friday – let us look forward to a match that is meticulously organized and full of excitement.