The 2012 ticket race: Better to have loved and lost… a pair of Handball tickets

A year today, the headlines will all be about an event lasting no more than ten seconds over in London’s East End.  And no, it doesn’t involve a West Ham player engaged in a nefarious activity…

The Men’s 100m final (or AT005 for those in the know) will be run at the exact mid-point of the London 2012 games.  A pair of tickets for this event are amongst the most sought-after in the world right now.  I want a pair.  I know many more who do.  I had pinned my hopes on securing a pair among the million odd who tried as part of the official UK ballot, run by LOCOG earlier this year.

The wrap, produced by Dow Chemical Company, will help make the Olympic Stadium the visual centrepiece of the Olympic Park. I failed alas – along with attempts to grab Opening Ceremony, Track Cycling and Swimming tickets.  But in recent weeks I’ve come to realise that the ticket race far from ended for many Brits.  There is actually a dedicated, hardcore contingent who have been all over the European resellers for months and have been successful in securing premier tickets.  I have been very late in arriving to the party but have been incredibly impressed by the humour, dedication and knowledge-share of a contingent of guys and gals on Twitter.  Many of whom I now share mutual ‘followship’ with.  Details on ticket sales are shared, speculation pored over.  It’s certainly brought a lot of excitement to an otherwise frustrating period.

With one year to go I, like many other London 2012 fans with tickets, want more tickets.  Everything feels more and more real as the days pass by.  Knowing what I know now, I only wish I was more proactive three or four months ago when it came to the tickets.  The fact is, Brits have had the chance to snap-up sessions from over twelve European destinations.  The German reseller, Dertour, gained the most publicity but in recent weeks the French reseller (Eventeam) and Swiss reseller (Globetrotter) have offered plum seats to Athletics, Track Cycling, Diving and Basketball among others.  Last weekend, hundreds of Britons flooded the inboxes of two Slovakian resellers offering many more tickets.  Italy and Finland are actively selling too.

The reality is that the 2012 ticket race is far from over.  Europe still holds promise for many.  And with a fabulous community present on social media channels like Twitter, it’s not too late for those without tickets to get in the race and grab a piece of the action.

I did some independent investigation of the European scene a few weeks ago and it introduced me to a magnificent website run by a gentleman called Neil Douglas who has done something that has put most other efforts to shame.  It is a must-have resource for ticket hunters everywhere.  I’ll still keep scratching and hustling around because I’m a tortured journalist in a way, but the big boy stuff is best left to Neil’s majestic depository.



DISPATCHES

So what’s happening in the UK?

Lots of speculation as to when the infamous third ballot of London 2012 tickets will go on sale in the UK.  I don’t have a direct source, per se, but believe we’ll hear nothing until after the conclusion of the Paralympic Games sale in September.  What feels certain is that it will definitely be before Christmas – Wenlock and Mandeville being all mischievous; a slogan like ‘Give the gift of tickets this Christmas…’  (did I say I was Don Draper?)…  Canary Wharf will be positively quaking in glee.

Wenlock and Mandeville are the mascots for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games in London.Interestingly, as an aside, with all the European resellers zealously offering packages only, there will be a lot of tickets left over which poses the question as to whether there may even be a fourth ballot in 2012 to ensure the remaining tickets are sold.  I know for a fact that Russia have got tickets for pretty much everything and the sale is proceeding at a moderate pace (one suspects it’s all about Sochi 2014 for them).  Lord Coe has implored NOCs around the world to turn-in unsold tickets as soon as possible so an interesting dilemma awaits, especially in Europe.  Given the success enjoyed by several sales already, will a reseller really want to return tickets knowing they can offer them to a hungry marketplace and enjoy anything up to a 30% mark-up?


Where does one find 30%?

A big topic of discussion in London currently is the transport issue.  The network (i.e. Underground, Overground, buses etc.) needs existing users to ease off for a core period of 17 days next year during the Games to allow for all the extra visitors.  Lots of people seem to be viewing it all with great anger and suspicion.  I would’ve thought the chance to work from home for a week or two, enjoying the sun and some great sport on the tube would counter any sufferance.  One only hopes employers see sense in the New Year.  London is counting on it.


Just spectacular

I was at the ‘1 year to go’ bash at Trafalgar Square the other week and while being present to hear IOC President Jacques Rogge invite the “athletes of the world…” to London was a genuine lump-in-throat moment, seeing the live pictures of Tom Daley’s dive at the Aquatics Centre was a complete thrill.  The venue looks magnificent, as do all of the major build projects in the Olympic Park.  For all the derision we, an often fickle and misguided public dish out, Britain can actually deliver magnificent infrastructure and design.  I’m only left angry now reading about how humble we should be compared to Beijing.  Our stadia will be full and look amazing, which is more than can be said for the Games in 2008.  We can not only be equals of that Olympiad – we can be the greatest.


Dreams smashed

Sad to report that my hopes of contributing to the Games directly through British Airways’ Great Britons competition ended this week following a rejection of my film idea.  Between that and missing out on plum Slovakian tickets it’s possibly been the first real period where I’ve fallen out of the love with the London games.  I hope it won’t last too long – I suspect it won’t.  I still have hope; after all, this is the Olympics!

The 2012 ticket race: Chariots of ire

If my estimates are correct, and you’re a UK applicant for London 2012 tickets, you should have one last lingering check on your debit/credit card now.  If you’ve seen a bite, congratulations, if not then I fear you need to prepare for the worst.

After a tease-fest of delayed deadlines and over eager forecasting the ticket processing juggernaut got to work on Wednesday of this week, and while its handlers will continue to hold to the June 10 closing date, all the intelligence suggests those who have been awarded tickets now know about it.

The immediate fall-out has been predictable, with an overriding sense of disappointment – either at missing out entirely or not getting enough tickets from a larger application.  But before the great British public sharpen their arrows for Lord Coe, they should have a good look around at each other.  Many of the events expected to be over-subscribed, were (there are a couple of exceptions; LOCOG insiders had expected the likes of Beach Volleyball and Basketball to do better among others) with unprecedented demand for the Ceremonies and the Athletics session which features the 100m final.  You don’t have to be a stats genius to realise that a million applications for approximately 20000 tickets aren’t going to go – as was reported to be the case for said Athletics session.

In the end, some folk have been a little churlish in their complaints and the feedback from all successful applicants suggest that ballots were fair and genuinely rotational, and that far from the rich getting all the tickets smaller applications did very well too.  The overarching average for successful applicants of tickets won from their original application was around 15-20%.  Some did push as high as 60-80%, and there were reports of 100% successes.

Some criticisms are fair (the most prevalent being the one centred around preferential ticket access for residents of Newham, the Olympic borough) but many who have rounded on the system used for London 2012 haven’t suggested an alternative that would be better.  It certainly looks like the system tried to award tickets to as many people as possible so everyone had something – this should be applauded.  Indulging in a first-come, first-served system would have been a technical nightmare and have discriminated against the many thousands who don’t have online access or preferred to apply via the postal system.

A loyalty buying scheme (where applicants have to commit to buy a certain number of tickets in order to get access higher profile events - similar to that adopted for Euro ’96 and other international tournaments) would have favoured wealthier applicants able to commit more cash upfront. 

My only suggestion, to enhance the system that was used, would have been to make applicants state their preference (i.e. ‘1’ means this is the event you most want tickets for, ‘5’ is the event you’re least bothered about in the context of your application).  I don’t think it would have been technically unfeasible and would have gone further to marry real demands.

A lot of US applicants using CoSport learnt of their fate with applications today, and in the process perhaps rubbed some of the UK applicants up the wrong way.  It is worth bearing in mind that given the allocations involved, it would have been a lot easier to provide this level of scientific reporting to applicants than what has been made available to those in the UK. 

Several outlets including The Guardian and London’s own Evening Standard report that anywhere between 250,000 to 900,000 applicants face getting no tickets from the first round of applications.  While one can feel complete sympathy for them, over a million against a reported 1.8 million of total applicants is not bad going on the part of LOCOG.  There will definitely be tickets left-over coupled with many planned windows of access ahead.

For those successful, all routes now lead to receiving official confirmations by June 24; right now there is geek-like permutation work at play.  The appetite for the London games shows no sign of abating – and once realism sets in among many of the cynics, this period will be judged as the the moment the countdown to the XXX Olympiad really began.