VANOC to launch Official Ticket Resale Website in November

[mr.x]

Olympic ticket scalping may be allowed on official site
Last Updated: Wednesday, September 30, 2009 | 10:17 AM PT
CBC News

Vancouver's Olympic organizers are putting the final touches on the official ticket resale website, which might allow ticket holders to make a profit on tickets they don't want to use.

Caley Denton, the vice-president of ticketing for the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC), said the new website will go live in November, but no final decision has been made on whether resellers will be able mark up the price of their seats.

"It's a possibility and something we are looking at," said Denton.

"We're looking at all the options, we're working with our partner Tickets.com to look at different models and we'll probably finalize that in the next month as to what we're going to do," said Denton.

VANOC warned when tickets first went on sale last fall that they would deactivate tickets sold by scalpers or through other online sites like Craigslist.org, because they are not authorized resellers, and launched at least two lawsuits against companies that were advertising tickets for sale online.

There were widespread reports of both ticket fraud and empty seats at the 2008 Beijing Summer Games.

VANOC is creating its own official ticket reselling website to cut down on fraud and ensure the 1.6 million tickets for the Games will be used so there are no empty seats at the events, Denton said.

"One of our big targets from the outset is make sure the venues are full, and we're working hard to do that," said Denton. "We know that people had to buy a long way ahead of time the nature of Olympic Games, so we want to provide an authorized resale site."

Denton said the next phase of official VANOC ticket sales, the final release before the Olympics, is set for early November, and the official reselling site will be launched a few weeks later.

Tickets for prime events such as the gold-medal game for men's hockey are currently listed for about $6,000 on the Craigslist.org and Showtimetickets.com websites.

Staff at Showtimetickets.com said sales have been slow, but they expect them to pick up as the February opening of the Games approaches.

The 2010 Winter Olympics will be held in Vancouver and Whistler from Feb. 12-28.






Not sure why CBC is calling it a scalping website....now, you've got a bunch of angry CBC people commenting about how it's government approved scalping.

[mooks28]

Yeah, doesn't the word scalping originate from the idea that you had to pay your scalp for the ticket -- meaning ridiculously overpriced?

The editor should change the headline.

[mr.x]

CBC should shut down their online comments feature....there's free speech, but then there's also lunacy which often goes on being cited as credible. I guess they do it for the web hits.