Ticket touting
googleking
Posts: 15,006 Forum Member
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looks like they are throwing the book at the touts
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18514090
Good. None of them can say they weren't warned.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-18514090
A 44-year old man from Catford in London has been charged with two counts of fraud over the sale of Olympic tickets, Scotland Yard has said.
Christakis Ioannou will also face charges of money laundering and the illegal sale of Olympic tickets when he appears at West London Magistrates' Court on 4 July.
Good. None of them can say they weren't warned.
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Stratford is hardly going to be full of blokes shouting 'Tickets, I'll buy/sell' but it will still happening.
Good luck to them but I think they have their work cut out.
If people don't like that, the solution's obvious - don't buy them. If everyone refused to pay more than face value, the 'problem' would disappear overnight.
Not really You can't buy tickets on the website now for any of the premium events like cycling ( road, track bmx or mountain) swimming, athletics or triathlon. There are also no tennis tickets or any of the equestrian events. You won't find any gymnastics tickets either except for a morning qualification at £150 a pop. There are no rowing tickets left and you won't find Modern Pentathlon availability. In fact I've never found them available. Oh and Water Polo and Diving are sold out too.
There are though Volleyball, Table Tennis, Football, Beach Volleyball, Weightlifting, and Wrestling - Freestyle tickets all available for £20. There are also Basketball tickets available at £30.
If people want to go, they can do.
I am not talking about the 100m final though I am talking about any event on the Olympic park. The sports you named aren't on the Park. The ONLY Olympic park ticket you can get I see is one Basketball ticket and it aint £30. The other basketball tickets are at Greenwich. But anyway my point is that touts will prosper because some people want to see and will sadly be prepared to fork out for an event at the Olympic Park or they want to see a premium event.
Can you point out to me where I can get some basketball tickets for £30? Because I've just had a look and I cant see any.
I know some people who will pay a lot of money to see any swimming or cycling. And I mean a lot.
If people risk losing money buying from touts who potentially may not even have legit tickets more fool them.
No-one is denying that. I have my fair share as a result of determination. But there will be those who will want to get hold of cycling and will pay. I am not condoning the practice. I wanted track cycling (I am sure most people did) and none ever came available. If they did they were there for minutes.
I think if you click on the select button you'll find that those tickets at that price aren't there. There are no basketball tickets left for 31st July but there are for 29th. Yes it says Cat D £30. Click on select though and lo and behold only £115 tickets left.
Anyway we're miles away now from the basic point that you can understand if people desperate enough to see a top event ( not some morning basketball match between Argentina v Denmark) and have the money will be tempted to pay a tout. Americans will as they are desperate for swimming tickets. I have a friend in Boston flying in and says he will pay 4 figures for a swimming finals night.
Football tickets are a given, i doubt the touts will have much joy selling football tickets given that more than 50% of the remaining tickets as of a few days ago were in the football, due to the size of the stadiums and the fact football is not a premium olympic sport at all.
Also, since the returns started, they have periodically added a handful of tickets here and there on an ad hoc basis to the site, tiny numbers that are being snapped up by the person lucky enough to be there are the time.
You can't just go by what the search function is saying because of that, you have to actually try and buy the tickets to know if they are still there.
I know this through experience, I've been lucky to get basketball qf tickets this week, equestrian jumping tickets the week before, and i've tried getting other tickets listed with no joy more than once, so no, you can't just go by the search function at all.
eta: and as Department S states, the price ranges listed on the search page are not the ones you will find are available to buy, it was the range available last time the page was up dated.
Vast majority of non-football tickets are AA/A/B price tickets and vast majority of sessions have no availability at all (just for context there are a total of 580 sessions in the olmypic park alone, of those 580 even the search function is only indicating 51 sessions have available tickets as of this moment, and 22 of those are for the orbit rather than a sporting event, even before you go through the process above).
Seems to be quite a number of people suddenly unable to make the evening of August 5th. :rolleyes:
Highly intelligent ad on the 2nd July where they have managed to block out their name on the tickets but leave the Block, Row and Seat number in full view. Should take LOGOC all of about 2 minutes to match the data up on that one.
lol. so much for the anti-touting measures then.