scalpers

Tickets for Vancouver Olympics available soon

Reseller market not cowed by 2010 organizers plans to crack down on scalpers

VANCOUVER – People who fail to nab any of the scarce tickets that will be available for the 2010 Olympic Games shouldn’t worry, says a leading Vancouver ticket broker.
He’ll have them for sale – and soon. Despite Vancouver Games organizers’ repeated claim that they’ll police tickets sold outside authorized channels, going so far as invalidating them, the resale market will not be cowed, said Mario Livich of ShowTime tickets.
“We’ll be very active in selling thousands of tickets for the 2010 Games,” he said.
“It’s a legal business, the buying and selling of tickets, and it’s a much-valued service in the marketplace.”
Tickets for the Vancouver Olympics go on sale Oct. 3 through an application system that will allow people just over a month to decide how many and which tickets they’d like to buy for the Games.
For those events where demand exceeds supply tickets will be sold via a lottery system.
While tickets for single events will be for sale, organizers are also promoting 58 different “Olympic experience” packages which combine multiple events at prices ranging from $140 to $1,267.
Package orders will be filled before individual events, so organizers say the best shot at some of the most popular and expensive seats will be to buy packages.
The lowest price for a single sporting event ticket is $25, while the highest is $775 for a gold-medal hockey ticket. That’s not including surcharges or the cost of transportation, numbers that won’t be available until closer to Oct. 3.
Over a million Olympic tickets will be available to the masses, but organizers have admitted that at events like gold-medal hockey, the vast majority of seats are being sold to “Olympic family” members, including sponsors and officials. The number of tickets that will be allotted to the public for each event has not been released.
Read the rest of the article here.
I don’t think you could ever do anything to stop tickets from being sold in a secondary market.  As long as there are people willing to sell them and people willing to buy them, there will always be ticket scalpers.  If the tickets go on sale on October 3, I wonder how long it will take before we start seeing the tickets for re-sale on ebay and craigslist.

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Saturday, September 27th, 2008 olympics, tickets 4 Comments

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