No 2010 olympic tickets for local brokers?
from http://www.flickr.com/photos/dbarefoot/2068746851/
Vancouver Olympic organizers say they’ve wiped out plans by local ticket brokers to resell prized tickets to the 2010 men’s gold-medal hockey game at inflated prices.
“We’ve tracked down somebody’s source of tickets and eliminated that source,” Vancouver Organizing Committee ticketing head Caley Denton disclosed yesterday.
The tickets, with a face value ranging from $350 to $775, were being promised in advance by the brokers, even though VANOC has yet to print a single ticket for the Olympics, said Mr. Denton, vice-president of sales and marketing.
“We thought something was going to happen and we acted pro-actively to prevent it. They were trying to sell Olympic tickets to different corporations in Canada, and someone alerted us.”
VANOC has vowed to crack down vigorously on ticket scalpers, who are anticipating huge dividends from the 2010 Games.
The problem is a perennial one at the Olympics, because about 30 per cent of all available tickets are allocated to members of the so-called “Olympic family,” including official corporate sponsors, national Olympic committees and other sporting organizations with Olympic ties.
Traditionally, large numbers of these specialty client tickets have found their way into the hands of brokers, particularly for premiere events.
Long-established Vancouver ticket broker Mario Livich said VANOC’s tough talk doesn’t bother him a bit.
“There’s nothing they can do,” said Mr. Livich, CEO of the city’s leading ticket operator, Show Time Tickets, which has its offices across the street from B.C. Place, site of the Games’ opening and closing ceremonies.
“Reselling tickets is not illegal. It’s wrong for anyone to interfere with that, and if anyone tries, we’ll fight it.”
Despite VANOC’s early success against one scalping operation, he said that Show Time expects to do a landslide business buying and selling Olympic tickets.
“Every major broker around is going to be involved in an event of that magnitude. My gut tells me that 30 per cent of Olympic tickets are going to be available for resale for the big individual events,” said Mr. Livich, who added that he is not the ticket agent that VANOC is targeting.
Mr. Livich added that he intends to post prices for the tickets “relatively soon,” although he would not say exactly when.
“We know we’re going to have tickets, and we are going to have very active buying and selling. I guarantee it.”
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