Quick Link: Get Boca Juniors Tickets. Now, onto our story…
The one thing every tourist guidebook recommends that you do when you come to Buenos Aires is to go to a Boca Juniors soccer game. Well, Sunday was the first time we had a chance to catch a match, and it was pretty exciting. The crowd is completely fanatic and the singing and enthusiasm is something you have to experience. I would recommend buying tickets in advance or even from a ticket broker who picks you up and takes you there, rather than going with the method we stumbled into…
We only decided a couple of hours before game time that we wanted to go, so we rushed out to our friends’ apartment in San Telmo and then all six of us walked over to the stadium together. We ended up at the back entrance of the stadium where they were letting cars through, and proceeded to ask the staff working there where we could buy tickets (using our rudimentary Spanish). Well, it turns out that we were completely on the wrong side of the stadium and they pointed us to a long walk around a park to the other side of the stadium in order to buy tickets. They also told us that reserved seating was not on sale on game days and that we would only be able to get general admission seating. (I don’t know whether this was true or not.) Hmmm… We started to debate our options. One of the workers was kind enough to warn us about scalpers and fake tickets too – and then proceed to say that he could get us legitimate seats for $100 pesos each.
We decided to have a group debate on the subject that basically went like this: “Well, he works here, so he’ll only have legit tickets.” “How much do tickets actually cost? Is $100 too much?” “We should just walk to the other side.” “Hmmm…I dunno.” Yes, it quickly became apparent that we had not done enough research. We thanked him and decided to walk to the closer side of the stadium (not where they had originally pointed us) since we saw a lot of people going that way and…well, who knows what we thought. Of course, once we made the 10-15 minute walk there, we found only another entrance and no ticket sales. Once again, we were pointed to the long walk around the stadium. (It seems they only sell tickets at one location.)
We started to walk back the way we came – grabbing a chorizo sandwich and Fanta along the way – and came across our “friend” who had offered to get us tickets. At this point, it was getting closer to game time, so we decided to see what he could do. We tried to negotiate for $500 pesos (which didn’t work) and he told us to wait off to the side for 10 minutes while he got us tickets. Once again, the group discussion started: “Is this legit?” “Are we paying too much?” “We should just walk around to the other side.” “What if they are sold out?” “I don’t want general admission.” Ok, group consensus – let’s wait the 10 minutes and see what happens. During that time, we saw another couple (who spoke Spanish) negotiate and get 2 tickets. We watched them walk into the game with no problem. Ok, good news…the tickets worked for them! We’ll wait for ours.
