Olympic Ticket Sales–“Curiouser and Curiouser”

2/24/2010

Thousands of people fell down the Rabbit Hole of the Olympic Ticketing process when they mistakenly trusted bogus web sites  Grandmas, doctors, lawyers, parents and families of athletes were all victims of a wonderland of scams during recent Vancouver Olympic events. Even reputable ticket brokers were hurt.

The Seattle Times Newspapers In Education (NIE) is hosting a contest to help draw attention to the Olympic ticket process.  Perhaps a grass roots effort will force needed changes. The more questions being asked, the more pressure put on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to find answers.

Right now, the IOC is as effective as the Mad Hatter in answering these riddles. Perhaps the students in the NIE contest will do a better job in answering questions like these:

• Why is the IOC exempt from public records laws?
• Should Olympic ticket sales remain unregulated? Can you think of a better system?
• Is it a crime to make money when your actions are technically legal?
• Who is to blame for the ticket problems associated with the Olympics? Is this a product of the monopoly, the abuse, the ethics, or the people?
• If the IOC only authorizes specific brokers to handle the tickets, how do tickets get into the hands of unauthorized brokers?
• Beijing Olympic officials threatened lawsuits for illegal ticket activity in 2008, but it still happened. Who is being sued?
• Similar situations occurred in Vancouver in 2010. Will lessons ever be learned to prevent repetition?
• Who will begin the investigation into how the various Olympic committee members handle their tickets? Are they using their access to prime event tickets in exchange for money or favors?
• Prolific web sites are already popping up for tickets to the 2012 London Olympics. What ticket procedures will be put in place to assure the public they are dealing with reputable and authorized dealers?

It will take more than high school writing contests to explain the absurdity of the current ticket process, but if enough people call for an investigation, perhaps the Cheshire Cat of Olympic ticketing will lose its smug smile.

Alice in Wonderland suggests we "might do something better with time, than waste it in asking riddles that have no answers."  Still, the 2012 Summer Olympics are just around the corner. It is time for these riddles to be answered.