Scalpers offer hundreds of 2010 Olympic tickets online
Last Updated: Thursday, December 11, 2008 | 12:43 PM ET
CBC News
Many Olympic ticket holders posted their seats for sale on Craigslist.org immediately after being notified they had won the ticket lottery on Wednesday. (Craigslist.org)Tickets for Vancouver's 2010 Olympic Games were for sale on the internet just a few short hours after the people who won the lottery for the first round of tickets released were notified.
On Wednesday, the Vancouver Organizing Committee began sending out e-mails to the hundreds of thousands of Canadians who applied for Olympic tickets. Many of the seats at the popular final events were awarded by lottery.
By Wednesday evening, tickets to the gold medal hockey game were being offered on Craigslist for $2,500 each. On eBay.ca, opening ceremony tickets were going for $2,000 a piece.
Some of the highest prices were advertised by professional ticket resellers, with top seats for the men's hockey final going for $4,280 each on Ticketsnow.com.
Caley Denton, vice-president of ticketing and consumer marketing for the Vancouver Organizing Committee, says VANOC can invalidate tickets it finds have been sold for more than face value. (Darryl Dyck/Canadian Press)Despite VANOC's efforts to limit the number of tickets ending up in the hands of professional resellers by limiting the number of orders per household, Visa card or computer IP address, Ticketsnow.com appeared to have hundreds of tickets for sale online covering most seating categories for most events and at considerable mark-up.
VANOC's vice-president of ticketing, Caley Denton, said buying from scalpers is still not a good idea.
"Selling tickets is against the terms and conditions of the ticket if it's above face value. So if we can find out about it and trace it, we can invalidate the bar code," said Denton.
Not everyone online was looking to make a profit. Many web postings were from people looking to trade tickets for other events or sell tickets at face value.
VANOC has promised to set up a sanctioned website for ticket holders to sell their tickets at face value with no risk.
Meanwhile, those who did not get the tickets they wanted will get another chance on Friday, when VANOC will open sales to other events that did not sell out — but only to those people who applied in the first round.
Any remaining tickets will go on sale to the general public in February.
