Olympic Ticket Watch

[ATFC Seagull]

Applied for £1500ish in total - mainly velodrome, 1 athletics session, 1 swimming session, 1 BMX and both ceremonies (2 tickets for everything). Had £46 taken yesterday.

I class this as completely honest as they were mostly £20-£50 with some higher price cycling tickets applied for too, and I can actually explain a Points Race and Madison. I could even have a fair crack at explaining the Omnium! I also didn't 'double-book' anything.

Not sure what I'll be seeing, but there's some free stuff I'll be at anyway (Cycling road race, Time Trial, Triathlon and Marathon).

To be fair I didn't phrase what I put above fairly - there are a lot of people who've put a lot of events down, it is completely within the rules and they would quite happily have gone to all of them. And to be fair, it seems the system has buggered them as much as its buggered those of us who couldn't afford to do that.

It's very obvious that a lot of people with high bank balances/credit cards have practically ticked every box for every event speculatively - and despite the anti-touting stuff god knows how many of them have dishonest intentions. The law of averages means that they are more likely to get tickets than those of us who only put down a handful. The fact that a poster above has said they couldn't get a single ticket for badminton says it all - we are not a nation of badminton fanatics last time I checked.

I shouldn't have phrased it as an issue of applying for a couple of tickets vs loads as such (because if I had a 10k credit card I'd have been well on the case!), but the system has:

a) Given an unfair advantage to people with a lot of money willing to gamble with it - in the spirit of the Olympics?
b) Created a system where tickets have not gone to people who really want to attend, appreciate and make an atmosphere at specific events - not conducive to a great Olympics.

 

[Bozza]

Sum total of sod all from £500 as well - does seem a little odd as I didnt think badminton would be packed to the rafters (the whole 500 quid wasnt on badminton but that was the banker to make sure we saw something)

Looking through some of the Euro sites now.

These guys have badminton (and a lot of other lower key stuff) - Tickets - Olympische Spiele 2012 - London - DERTOUR

(Using Google Chrome is good for these sites as it will offer to translate the whole page for you)

 

[Bozza]

The application process has been an absolute farce. Sure, it would have been complicated but they've had a lot of time and and a lot of money to get this right.

There are a group of very obvious marquee events and there should have been the options to select as many of those as you wanted with a "I'd like to go to any one of these please" choice. Your application would then be drawn across all of those events and sessions rather than treating each session in complete isolation.

It would mean my own personal application wouldn't have yielded much, of course, but we might have got to a 'big event' and numerous others would too.

 

[Bozza]

Any of the European Union agents, listed here - Ticket eligibility, should sell to the UK without a problem.

 

[Titanic]

Well, at least we got something from our two applications totalling £7000+

31 May 2011 POS2856 27MAY11, http://WWW.TICKETS.LONDON2012 , LONDON GB - 116.00
31 May 2011 POS0300 27MAY11, http://WWW.TICKETS.LONDON2012 , LONDON GB - 386.00

now we have to wait and see what it is... but looks like table tennis, BMX or maybe equestrian if we are lucky.

 

[Triggaaar]

I find this all quite shocking. Were people able to apply from anywhere in the world, or what?

 

[Crouch End Seagull]

Any of the European Union agents, listed here - Ticket eligibility, should sell to the UK without a problem.

The Czech site has lots of great tickets but you have to be Czech to buy them - I phoned them up. BUT if you have friends in Czech Republic you can get what you want.

 

[teaboy]

The 'fairness' of the system massively depends on what you want from it. If you wanted genuine fans of the sports to attend then priority should've gone to members of the national governing bodies before general sale. However, this would still leave most sessions over-subscribed. If you want everyone to have equal chance of going then have a single ticket price per session (£50?) for every seat and do a ballot. Some people would still miss out. If you want as many different people as possible to attend then limit allocation to 1 pair of tickets across ALL events.

Ultimately there was always going to be more applications than tickets, and however you sort it out is 'unfair' on some level. Why should someone who 'just fancies seeing something' go when I'm a British Cycling member and they don't actually care? Why should I go just because I have a Visa card with a decent limit on it?

There are the test events, some free stuff that everyone can go to and the Paralympics too, so there's still plenty of opportunity to see world-class sport in London. After all, that's what the Olympics is about, not a 'nice day out' for spectators.

 

[Crouch End Seagull]

I find this all quite shocking. Were people able to apply from anywhere in the world, or what?

Every country had a different system - some like Germany, Canada and Czech republic had systems where you just chose the events you wanted. Would have been better if we'd have done that. The system we employed favoured people willing to gamble with huge outlays.
Still lots left on the German site but you have to pay very large booking fees for very low key events. But if you really want to go to Archery at 9am that's the place.

 

[Crouch End Seagull]

Well, at least we got something from our two applications totalling £7000+

31 May 2011 POS2856 27MAY11, http://WWW.TICKETS.LONDON2012 , LONDON GB - 116.00
31 May 2011 POS0300 27MAY11, http://WWW.TICKETS.LONDON2012 , LONDON GB - 386.00

now we have to wait and see what it is... but looks like table tennis, BMX or maybe equestrian if we are lucky.

I'll meet you at the BMX!

 

[ATFC Seagull]

The 'fairness' of the system massively depends on what you want from it. If you wanted genuine fans of the sports to attend then priority should've gone to members of the national governing bodies before general sale. However, this would still leave most sessions over-subscribed. If you want everyone to have equal chance of going then have a single ticket price per session (£50?) for every seat and do a ballot. Some people would still miss out. If you want as many different people as possible to attend then limit allocation to 1 pair of tickets across ALL events.

Ultimately there was always going to be more applications than tickets, and however you sort it out is 'unfair' on some level. Why should someone who 'just fancies seeing something' go when I'm a British Cycling member and they don't actually care? Why should I go just because I have a Visa card with a decent limit on it?

There are the test events, some free stuff that everyone can go to and the Paralympics too, so there's still plenty of opportunity to see world-class sport in London. After all, that's what the Olympics is about, not a 'nice day out' for spectators.

Simple thing would be an initial limit to applications of 3 events. Of course it's not really practical to work out who "deserves" one or not - e.g. I am not a current BCF member but am a massive fan of professional cycling - but you can gauge how much they want the tickets by whether its one of their 3 or not. This system would at least have eliminated the problems of people having an advantage because of their credit card limit, and sports like badminton (and probably cycling) being filled with people who just want a nice day out and also applied for every other event, instead of the people who love those sports. Not all events would have filled, so a second round could allow people who want to get to loads of stuff to snap up other tickets.

Ah well, easy to say now.

 

[Couldn't Be Hyypia]

People on here saying they have tickets for this or that sport, but how do you know that? I thought it wasn't announced for another month?

 

[strings]

Looks like no tickets in the strings household.

 

[ATFC Seagull]

People on here saying they have tickets for this or that sport, but how do you know that? I thought it wasn't announced for another month?

Depends on what you put down. I put down 1 * £50 ticket for velodrome (team pursuit final) and 2 * £20 footy tickets for Wembley. So if I had lost 50 quid or 40 quid I'd know what I was going to. However, I have had no money taken.

I don't know if you can log in and re-look up what you have got - if so I'd imagine most people should be able to work it out, but then I spose if you applied for a lot of stuff there are a lot of possible combinations etc...

 

[Titanic]

Is that from two separate applications? If not you've been overcharged.

Yes, it is two applications... both of them included all the big stadium sessions... unsurprisingly it doesn't look like we got any of them, and could probably have bought these tickets directly from the various European website. Still we can only wait and see what Olympic delights await us for our £502.

 

[Bozza]

People on here saying they have tickets for this or that sport, but how do you know that? I thought it wasn't announced for another month?

Depending on what you applied for, and the monetary value deducted from your card, you may be able to deduce what you got. Certainly the case for me.

 

[mejonaNO12 aka riskit]

None for me....though i'm kind of pleased.

Getting none means i get priority in the next round of tickets...

I could have eneded up with JUST the gymnastics (which i wasnt overly fussed about) and then have lost my priority in the second stage.

 

[Southstandfaithful]

None for me either....... pretty fed up to be honest.

 

[drew]

Right not gonna read all this but out of interest did ANYONE who played the game "honestly" so to speak (i.e. only applied for a couple of tickets for one or two events - £50-£150 which if they were on general sale they'd have gone for) get lucky? Seems to me the only people who've been successful applied for have got 1/3 of the £500+ they went for...

I applied for two events and got one of them. Both were probably oversubscribed so I got lucky. However, I didn't just go for the cheapest seats which was probably the advantage. £285 for 3 tickets at the swimming to get to see 5 races in an 80 minute session.

The Czech site has lots of great tickets but you have to be Czech to buy them - I phoned them up. BUT if you have friends in Czech Republic you can get what you want.

DAVEINPRAGUE could become a bit busy then!!!

 

[Giraffe]

None for me....though i'm kind of pleased.

Getting none means i get priority in the next round of tickets...

I could have eneded up with JUST the gymnastics (which i wasnt overly fussed about) and then have lost my priority in the second stage.

I was just wondering this. May actually mean that those of us who got nothing will now be able to better pick those remaining good events if there are any. Fully expect the website to crash on the day though.