2012-08-03

LOCOG do not want to sell Olympic tickets

At least, that is the only reasonable conclusion from the news that Ticketmaster blocks polling of the Olympics ticketing site:

[Adam Naisbitt] shared ticket information via Twitter and helped hundreds buy tickets to watch the games.
A London 2012 spokesman said its ticket agent blocked all computerised polling of the site to foil touts.
So Ticketmaster does not want people to discover what people are willing to pay for Olympics tickets (thereby maximising revenue for Locog, assuming they are on a high percentage?)

All that touts are doing is buying from primary ticket owners and reselling closer to the event time to those willing to pay more as they become more certain of their ability to attend the event. The current situation means that anyone who can't plan far ahead (e.g. because they need to arrange transport to London) cannot practically travel to London in anticipation of buying a ticket, because there's a very high chance that they cannot obtain tickets at literally any price.

If LOCOG had any balls (and a reasonably well-functioning ticketing system) they would tell Ticketmaster to take a hike and run an active secondary market in tickets, buying back tickets at (purchase price - X%, with X between 50 and 90 depending on event and time of return) and reselling them. That they are not doing this indicates to me that they don't give a crap about making a decent return on investment, preferring instead to chase some chimera of "equality of access". My arse. If you want equality of access, run a lottery and tell the House of Commons up-front that you're giving away a billion or two in potential revenue in return for "equality". And don't cry about the un-filled seats that result.

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