Ticketing, the Perennial Problem

[Sir Rols]

Intersting idea here., but also one I have some doubts about. Hasn't ticketing been one of the big areas of corrution concern with FIFA?

IOC should take control of Olympic ticketing process says Reedie

November 8 - Britain's International Olympic Committee (IOC) vice-president Sir Craig Reedie has claimed that the organisation should take control of the Olympic ticketing distribution process rather than leave it in the hands of the host Organising Committee.

Olympic ticketing is a multi-million dollar business while it was responsible for around 30 per cent of the revenue raised by London 2012.

But it is an issue that has also caused huge controversy, particularly at London 2012 when thousands of sports fans were left disappointed at not being able to secure tickets for the Games.

"I am of the opinion that the IOC should go into the ticketing business and handle the ticketing for the Olympics," Sir Craig said here today.

"The IOC should be responsible for distributing Olympic tickets worldwide and they should help the Organising Committee in distributing tickets in the host nation.

"It would be a huge help to the Organising Committee with the expertise the IOC could provide.

"With some host cities, raising revenue from tickets is not always a big thing but with other cities, like London, it was a huge part of the commercial operation to raise revenue.

"But whoever the host city is, I think there would be a much smoother situation if the IOC was running it."

Sir Craig's comments come following a major ticketing scandal within the Olympic Movement earlier this year when a Sunday Times investigation alleged that people around the world had been caught offering to sell thousands of tickets on the black market, including for the top events like the men's 100 metres final.

The general secretary of National Olympic Committee of Ukraine, Volodymyr Gerashchenk, was also forced to resigned after the BBC filmed him offering to sell thousands of London 2012 tickets on the black market.

The scandals came when a total of 1.2 million Olympic tickets were released to National Olympic Committees (NOCs) around the world for London 2012, who bid for their share of the ticket allocation based on demand in their countries.

This system resulted in officials exaggerating local demand so they could get the maximum number of tickets despite them being forbidden to sell their tickets abroad or to anyone who plans to resell them.

The IOC could claim that they would prevent a recurrence of this but any move to take control of the hugely lucrative business could be met with huge opposition, particularly from host cities who could stand to lose billions to the IOC if ticket distribution was centralised by the Olympic governing body.

Inside The Games

[Rob2012]

RE: London 2012 - there are three issues which came up. One isn't really an "problem", the other two though definitely are...

1. People didn't get the tickets they wanted. This took up BY FAR the biggest amount of press coverage. In reality LOCOG used a computer selecting random people to distribute the tickets to. There was no inherent bias. It was done pretty much as fairly as possible. This is the "non-issue issue".

2. Technical issues with TicketMaster. None to begin with as LOCOG sensibly decided to give people a long window to submit their ticket requests. Some issues in the later sales though.

3. Unregulated NOC sales and ticket markups. Because of point #1 I bought a good number of tickets through CoSport. Not the best, big markups and long queues for collection. Also, these NOC sellers are open to corruption as we saw with Ukraine.

IF the IOC can draw it all under their control they should. BUT only if they model their system on LOCOG's, not on CoSport's, and only if they have a robust enough IT system to cope. With the internet, having loads of seperate sellers no longer makes sense to me.

And just because FIFA screw something up, doesn't mean it's necessarily bad. Easy way for the IOC not to make FIFA's mistakes - don't give the contract to your nephew like Blatter did.

[Sir Rols]

And just because FIFA screw something up, doesn't mean it's necessarily bad. Easy way for the IOC not to make FIFA's mistakes - don't give the contract to your nephew like Blatter did.

Amen!

[baron-pierreIV]

Unfortunately, no matter how well-intentioned the system is, and just imagining that they can set up a 95% fool-proof ordering system, the problem is in the actual delivery of tickets. In an industrialized country, no problem. The postal systems are fairly reliable. But when it comes to the emerging economies like Russia and Brazil: are their postal systems very reliable, or will the IOC have to partner with a private firm, like a FedEx to deliver the tickets (thereby adding to the cost of the tickets) to deliver the tickets. That's the thing. But it will still need a CoSport to take care of distribution in other foreign countries--not unless the IOC can organize and deputize their NOCs to take on the ticket-distribution process.

[SwissO]

What would that change ???

Instead to get ATRs selected by each NOC... they will be choosed by the IOC !!!

So we will still have the same problem with incompetent ATRs...

OK, we will reduce the problems of corruptions of the NOCs.

But it will come against a main rule of the IOC where the national commercial revenues are under the strict and only control of the NOC !

[Athensfan]

If the IOC sells the tickets will they share the revenue with the host? If not, this is a problem.

[baron-pierreIV]

What would that change ???

Instead to get ATRs selected by each NOC... they will be choosed by the IOC !!!

So we will still have the same problem with incompetent ATRs...

OK, we will reduce the problems of corruptions of the NOCs.

But it will come against a main rule of the IOC where the national commercial revenues are under the strict and only control of the NOC !

Really don't understand your point. The thing is, so the IOC can control the thing...just like they took over the awarding of all broadcast contracts; so they can also centrzlise the whole ticketing process (including distribution of tickets to the sponsors, etc.) And for a number of countries now (including the US, Australia, I think Austria, Bulgaria), the Org Committee already works with the various NOCs but have subcontracted the actual dirty work to CoSport.

The larger and more complicated an Olympic Games gets, the more complex does a fault-free ticketing system get. It will NEVER be perfect if you are dealing with less advanced countries like a Burundi, Afghanistan, the Seychelles, etc., etc.

Of course the IOC will have to share ticket revenues with the Org Committees because the local OCs count on a certain percentage of ticket sales for their revenue column.

[zekekelso]

The current systems is designed for corruption. Corruption isn't a feature, it's a bug. The only reason you let the NOC's touch ticket's is to allow them and them members to graft profit and power from them.

The media focuses on the outright black market sales from some countries. But the actions of supposed "good guys" like the USOC are no better. The USOC skims $millions off the top, turns ticket sales over to corrupt and incompetent CoSport, then turns a blind eye when CoSport blatanty violates the IOC's mark-up rules.

As long as this continues, it's clear corruption is still rampant in the IOC and NOC's. They could easily end it. They don't.

And I'm sure there's a poster up somewhere inside the hidden rooms of the IOC saying, "Thank God for FIFA." As long as people just the IOC by FIFA's standard, they will get a pass on their corruption.

[gotosy]

Report reveals that thousands of in-demand tickets for leading Olympic events were not sold

The revelation will surprise sports fans who spent hours trying to apply online for the must-see events only to experience website crashes and disappointment.

Athletics had more than 2,000 tickets unsold, there were hundreds of tickets left for the opening and closing ceremonies, and even artistic gymnastics, which was declared a sell-out, had 1,230 remaining.

A spokesman for the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games said a number of the empty seats were from early sessions, particularly in the temporary venues.

Locog hailed the ticketing process as a huge success. Overall, it says it failed to sell just three per cent of the 263,824 Olympic tickets and two per cent of the 55,455 Paralympic tickets. Ticket sales raised £659 million of its £2.4 billion budget.

The figures are contained in a report from Locog chief executive Paul Deighton to the London Assembly.

The report reveals that fewer than half of tickets to many prime London 2012 Olympic sports events were sold to UK residents, but Locog achieved its stated aim of having 75 per cent of tickets available to the British public because of high local turnout for preliminary events in large stadiums.

However, the UK percentage of attendances at some events such as gymnastics, track cycling and swimming, was less than 40 per cent at the final sessions.

Events at the 80,000-seat Olympic Stadium showed a similar split – just half of tickets to the opening and closing ceremonies went to UK sales in the official ballot system.

Organisers say around 31,000 seats, or 51 per cent, were available for local sale to the highly popular men’s 100 metres final won by Usain Bolt.

The figures have confirmed suspicions that many of the best seats at the prime events went to corporate clients, sponsors, rights holders and other VIPs, although Deighton pointed out there was a high UK turnout for preliminary events in large stadiums, such as football (91 per cent), hockey (78 per cent), volleyball (77 per cent), basketball (71 per cent), track and field (68 per cent) and the Paralympics (91 per cent).

Overall ticket numbers were boosted to 11.3 million, of which 10.99 million were sold.

http://www.telegraph..._medium=twitter

[Faster]

The IOC completely controlling ticketing would solve a few problems. The over-zealous hoarding of tickets by OCOG's (Beijing and Sochi), control prices by using a universal currency (the Swiss Franc being the obvious choice) and allowing an overall spread of tickets to reflect sports interest. Ticketing would be the remain consistent between Olympic Games and hopefully be structured more inline with traditional sporting events than the current models which have OCOG's classify 75% of a venue as prime seating.

In the end it would be apart of the IOC revenue streaming that gets directed to the hosts. Obviously their would need to be imput from the OCOG's on price (I don't think most Brazilians would like to see tickets at the London prices of 1000 to 6500 Reals).