Beijing Olympic Games

Ticket scramble leaves venues half empty

By Josh Peter, Yahoo! Sports

BEIJING – Bustling at noon, the plaza outside a subway station near the Olympic stadium looked more crowded than some of the venues did on Wednesday. Would-be spectators engaged in this city’s fastest-growing sport: scoring tickets.

Zahid Mir watched the chaotic scene of buyers and sellers. He sighed. In late July, Olympic officials triumphantly announced all tickets had been sold for the events in Beijing. It was a source of pride for local officials, but now it’s the basis for a conundrum.

Galled by scalpers asking up to five times the face value of tickets, Mir said he decided to watch the opening two days of competition on TV. He was shocked by what he saw.

“The (venues) were half-empty,’’ he said Wednesday. “This is just rubbish. I spoke to God-knows-how-many people, Chinese and foreigners. ‘Sorry, no tickets.’ ’’

In a country of 1.3 billion and a city teeming with more than 7 million residents, some of the best places to spread out and enjoy elbow room have been Olympic sports venues. Empty seats have outnumbered bodies at some events, leaving people to wonder who has all the unused tickets.

“That’s the million-dollar question,’’ one ticket broker said. “You’ll have to ask the Chinese government.’’

Rather than providing data about the 7.2 million tickets that were available for these Games before the announced sellout, the officials from the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games have provided only excuses. The heat and rain, they contend, has shrunk the crowds. But interviews with buyers and sellers at the Beitucheng subway stop and other people involved in ticket distribution shed light on the situation.

On the third day of competition, Mir said he finally gave up hope of buying tickets at face value. He paid 300 yuan (about $45) for a field hockey ticket with a face value of 50 yuan (about $8). He said he’d paid face value for tickets at the 2004 Games in Athens, but on Wednesday he seemed less upset about his own plight than something else.

“If the stadium is half empty and they know it’s half empty, why don’t they bring the schoolchildren?’’ said Mir, a retiree from England. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

Affordable tickets have been hard to find for Olympic fans.
(Josh Peter / Y! Sports)

Later Wednesday, the licensed broker for Olympic tickets allocated for the U.S. public reported a sale every three minutes and said more than 15,000 tickets remained for purchase – less expensively than at the subway plaza. Mark Lewis of CoSport, which won the contract as the official U.S. ticket broker, said the company obtained about 100,000 tickets from BOCOG to sell to the American public. But Mir has no chance at getting any of those tickets.

To purchase a ticket from CoSport, one must present a U.S. passport at the company’s pickup site in Beijing. Each of the 204 countries and territories recognized by the International Olympic Committee contracts with a licensed broker, and access to those tickets is restricted based on one’s residency.

An undisclosed number of tickets go to corporate sponsors, Olympic officials, sports federations and VIPs, and those appear to be the seats going unused. At some basketball games, for example, the upper bowl has been packed while the lower bowl that includes premium seats has been half empty.

Some of those tickets are ending up on the secondary market. One official sponsor recently sold a half-dozen premium seats with a face value of 750 yuan a ticket for twice as much. But some U.S. brokers are scrambling to find tickets, and the Internet figures to be playing a significant role.

Stub Hub, the online ticket resale company, has fueled a thriving secondary market for tickets in the United States. But there is no equivalent to Stub Hub in China because selling tickets for more than face value is illegal. Scalpers at the subway plaza said police arrested two people in the past few days, but new developments may signal an ease in restrictions.

After rounding up thousands of volunteers to help stage the Games, the government has rounded up new volunteers: people to stand and cheer at the sparsely attended events. They’ve been easy to spot, clad in yellow shirts. The scene at the subway plaza indicated a change, too.

A uniformed police officer stood on the curb no more than 15 feet away as sellers fanned out tickets and buyers pulled wads of cash out of their pockets. Asked if scalping was illegal, the officer confirmed it was and said those violating the law would be arrested. But no one looked in jeopardy of being detained, much less arrested.

Among the sellers was a small woman who looked to be in her 50s and out of her element. She tugged on the arm of a young woman and offered to sell tickets. When the potential buyer expressed interest, the woman led her around the back of the subway station, out of view of the police, and pulled three tickets out of her handbag. Two were for the U.S. women’s basketball game with a face value of 100 yuan. One was for the U.S. men’s game with face value of 50 yuan.

The older woman said she had waited in line for 24 hours with an estimated 30,000 people when Beijing officials sold what they reported were their last tickets. She said she was an unemployed suit maker and that her son had wanted to attend the games, but family issues would prevent them from going.

Now she was trying to sell the pair of tickets to the U.S. women’s game for 2,000 yuan and the ticket to the U.S. men’s game for 1,500 yuan.

Where were all the tickets as NBC’s cameras showed rows and rows of empty seats? After the potential buyer moved along, three of them went back into the Chinese woman’s purse.