Tickets Hard to Find For Olympic Families

1/6/2010

Buying tickets for the Olympic games has become the newest test of athleticism.   Despite the new "sport" of purchasing tickets, it seems logical that tickets would be set aside for the competitors' families.  However, the athletes' families who have moved countries, worked multiple jobs and mortgaged their homes to see their loved ones compete are struggling to get tickets and often end up as easy prey for fraudulent ticket scams.   

A quick web search will lead you to the strict guidelines and rules in place for selecting the host city, each sport, the judging, the Olympic oath and the metallic makeup of the Olympic medals.  However, the rules and regulations for distributing tickets are nowhere to be found.        

New Jersey businessman, Sead Dizdarevic is well known for his involvement in the Salt Lake City Olympic bid scandal in which he admitted to giving $131,000 in cash to Salt Lake City officials for an Olympic bid.  Dizdarevic escaped the scandal virtually unharmed and ironically came out on top as an official Olympic sponsor.  After earning a reported $70 million from the Beijing Olympics, Dizdarevic reportedly paid the Vancouver Organizing Committee, VANOC,  $15 million to be the exclusive ticket seller. Dizdarevic's companies, CoSport and Jet Set are the largest buyers of 2010 Olympic tickets. 

CoSport is the only authorized ticket dealer in the United States.  CoSport primarily bundles expensive ticket and hotel packages for "Olympic family members."  But "Olympic family members" doesn't mean what you think.  It refers to sponsors, media, and corporate VIPs. According to Seattle Times authors and investigators Ron Judd and Christine Willmsen, the U.S. general public was granted a third of what Jet Set and CoSport were given.  The real Olympic family members who cannot afford these packages are left scrambling for tickets because the number of tickets set aside for athletes' families is nearly non-existent. 

The United States Olympic Committee (USOC) used to provide two Opening or Closing Ceremony tickets as well as two event tickets for each athlete.  However, at the Sydney games, a shortage of tickets left only a quarter of the athletes' families with tickets.  "It's sad but also understandable that the USOC can no longer do it," said Anita DeFrantz, who sat on the boards of the U.S., international and Salt Lake Olympic committees.  As for providing tickets to family members, DeFrantz acknowledged, "we've discussed it many times: how much would it cost, could our budget bear it, was it something families were saving for already?" 

Family members desperate to see their loved ones compete after years of hard work are left out in the cold, on their own, to get tickets and often find themselves at the mercy of thieves. 

Parents  of Olympic swimmer Rebecca Adlington fell victim to the crooks behind the beijingtickets.com ticket scam.  According to a Fox Sports News story, the British swimming team had a mere 15 tickets to share amongst officials and the families of the 35 swimmers.  Resorting to official looking online ticket sources left the Adlingtons $2,000 out of pocket and ticketless.  The Adlingtons watched their daughter become the first British female swimmer to win a gold since 1960 on television, thousands of miles away in England, unable to share in her glory.  After hearing their story, an ex-pat businessman based in Beijing provided the Adlingtons with tickets for Rebecca's 800 meter freestyle final in which she also won gold and broke a 19 year old record. 

Another set of parents were also rescued by the kindness of strangers when the tickets they bought to see their daughter, Amanda Clark, swim turned out to be bogus.  Congressman Tim Bishop and the Bank of New York came to the rescue and secured a pair of tickets to a swimming event and the opening ceremony for the Clarks. 

David Lowe was lucky enough to have tickets to watch his daughter play in the Olympic softball games.  However, in seeking out tickets to the opening ceremony to watch his daughter march with the rest of the world, he stumbled upon BeijingTicketing.com as a ticket source when CoSport, "ran out" of tickets.  He lost nearly $2,000 to the fraudulent website.    

BeijingTicketing.com was one of the first links to pop up in a Google search and the website appeared authentic, says Gerald Lim, another Olympic athlete parent defrauded by the site.  His daughter qualified in April 2008 for various swimming events but had to wait several months to guarantee that no one else who met the standard qualification time bumped her out of a spot.  By the time she officially had a spot at the Olympics, tickets through CoSport were gone.  Lim spent more than $3,000 on the British scam website only to be left empty-handed. 

One Canadian parent's battle for tickets to watch his son compete in the Beijing Olympics stirred up enough bad publicity that VANOC sought out Petro-Canada to sponsor tickets for the Canadian athletes' families for the 2010 games.  The Petro-Canada Canadian Athlete Family Program will provide 500 families with guaranteed tickets and accommodations.  The program includes up to four nights of accommodations, meals and event tickets for two immediate family members.

Unfortunately, the United States has failed to follow Canada's lead.  Families of U.S. athletes are still encouraged to buy tickets from Jet Set and CoSport which means unless they can afford very expensive ticket packages, they will again, be left scrambling for what should be a guaranteed right to see their loved ones compete in person as opposed to on a television set.