Online vendor offered 2010 Olympic tickets before printing
Games officials say claims of sellers having tickets are false
Last Updated: Friday, September 21, 2007 | 5:55 PM PT
CBC News
Tickets to the opening ceremony of the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver aren't even printed, but they appeared Friday to be on sale — briefly — for big money.
ShowTimeTickets.com, based in Vancouver, advertised the tickets for between $1,815 and $2,440 a seat at BC Place on Feb. 12, 2010.
ShowTimeTickets.com's website on Friday morning displayed prices for tickets to the 2010 Winter Olympics opening ceremonies.
(CBC News)
But according to Vancouver's Olympic organizers, tickets for the Games aren't yet available.
On the VANOC website, a posting said that "until the ticketing program has been launched, any individual or group … claiming to have access to Games tickets is making that claim falsely."
A spokesman for VANOC said any sales would be unauthorized and such tickets may not be honoured.
"The reality is, none of the tickets have been allocated," said Caley Denton, the committee's vice-president of ticketing and consumer marketing.
"There are no tickets that have been given to anybody at this point and people always need to purchase from authorized sources."
Later Friday morning, the ShowTimeTickets.com website was altered to suggest that potential buyers register their interest in tickets when they become available.
A ShowTimeTickets.com representative told the CBC that the advertised tickets were not being sold directly by ShowTimeTickets. The company said an affiliate from Austin, Texas — TicketCity.com — was selling the tickets on the ShowTimeTickets site.
Zach Anderson, TicketCity's vice-president of marketing, said his company was able to sell the tickets because he can guarantee access as a result of his contacts made in 20 years in the ticket broker business.
Anderson promised customers would get their tickets even though tickets haven't been printed or allocated by Olympic officials.
"We guarantee all the tickets we sell," said Anderson.
Minutes after Anderson spoke to the CBC on Friday morning, the tickets were no longer available on ShowTimeTickets.
Instead, customers were redirected to a page asking potential buyers to register their interest in tickets when they are available.
"Rest assured you are at the right place as WE GUARANTEE that you will be amongst the first notified as the tickets you want are available," said the web page.
When asked why the information on the website had changed, Anderson suggested the company may have sold out of the tickets Friday morning.
"The availability of our tickets always fluctuates," said Anderson.
With files from the Canadian PressShare Tools
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