Where is the pleasure in that?

2012: A ticket-hunting odyssey - and the passionate few

I’ve spent the last couple of days making peace with, and consolidating, all the Olympic tickets bought over the last year. Being honest, my demeanour has been quite vacuous on the matter of late - which is alarming considering how the hunt to secure my place at London 2012 has become nothing short of an obsession. Maybe I have reached the point of saturation. I’d laugh were it not so damn ironic.

Harking back to bright, springtime days of 2011, the process of buying official tickets for the London Olympics seemed like such pure sport. A lottery with a twist. Money was staked, fingers were crossed. And online bank account statements were monitored like hawks in pinstripes, checking for that all important deduction that said you made it - that you were going to the Games.

I was quite fortunate. Across two applications in the first round of LOCOG sales I secured six pairs of tickets, including Athletics and Tennis. As I began to find my groove in writing about my experiences and witnessing the unfolding drama on Twitter, I had no idea that a year later things would be quite so different.

As history notes, the horse bolted and changed the landscape when news broke that tickets were available on official websites in mainland Europe. For whatever blather exists about EU disharmony and austerity, never has a league of nations been so important for such as a pseudo-trivial exercise. Without Europe, I wouldn’t have jumped from twelve modest tickets to a comparatively embarrassing total of around ninety.

I certainly never planned nor budgeted for it. Yet when those opportunities came, I couldn’t resist. With opportunity comes enlightenment, chance and choice. I wanted to see Track Cycling, but had no idea what the right sessions would be to attend - likewise Athletics. The immense online community that is the #2012Tweeps have played a huge part in understanding both the sweet science of ticket hunting, and shaping a Games experience that I can ultimately feel good about.

It was expected to be an Olympics dominated by Social Media, and the work of the Tweeps has singlehandedly challenged all perceptions that normal Brits couldn’t get hold of tickets. Indeed their existence and help have defined the debate around the matter. The refuseniks and haters have been given a disproportionate voice across all traditional media because the power of the social community threatened to bring forward the one thing news men and women seem to hate: a good news story. Indeed, the ticket-buying actions of a relative minority have gone a long way to dispel the notion that real fans are without tickets. That is untrue in the absolute main. Fair-weather followers perhaps, but those with the passion to be in London at the Olympics? Never.

As a Joe writing about my ticket-hunt I crossed paths with a community of people and a cross-section of fans who all shared a common goal. And amongst that group were some brilliant minds. It’s with a rye smile I see Tweets now about the work of Ben Marsh’s site checker, when a proverbial generation of SocMed users have missed the exploits of the brilliant Neil Douglas and Alex Kersley, along with Kevin Plasmans - all of whom have been instrumental in providing a platform for Olympic ticket hunters to gather news, information and data. Along with the work of Volshy and Matt de Monte as marketeers, tickets have made their way into the hands of real people - and in the process made many an ATR and NOC very profitable.

Many other Tweeps have made and shaped the experiences of others as the days tick toward the Opening Ceremony this Friday. Indeed it was a Tweep tip-off that enabled me to get to the LOCOG site on time last month and snare a pair of what always were my dream ticket. I remember being an eleven year old watching Rebollo light the cauldron in Barcelona. And now I will see it being lit in my hometown. It bought me close to tears the day I got them - and even now I well-up a little as I write.

The Tweep community - its core - are generous with their time, help and inclusiveness. I, like many others (including a plethora of international athletes competing in London) owe them a huge debt of thanks.

The ticketing process for London 2012 will be analysed and assessed to death when the Games are over, if nothing else to aid Rio and their efforts in 2016. But time looks set to judge these upcoming Games kindly. Perhaps the vitriol has been such because so many people wanted to go. That for all the pouting and protestations of disengagement, the haters actually want to be there.

As for the result of my aforementioned consolidation: I tallied in summary that I was attending some 36 sessions over the Olympic Games. It will be an endurance race and a test in the extreme. But, to counter my irony from the outset - this is the Games I always wanted, and yet I never knew it. Not without the help of a passionate few.

Read more about me and London 2012.