As many of our followers know, getting tickets for the
Olympics at the last minute has now become nearly impossible. Don’t show up
without tickets and think you’ll get some on the street. The fines are high,
and unlike most sports events, Olympic venues in London were completely devoid
of scalpers.
The ticketing process is fraught with obstacles, including a
complicated pricing structure, random availability on any ticket drop day, and
the fact that buying your tickets at one time doesn't mean that those tickets
are anywhere near each other in the venue, especially if you purchase them very late (or during the Games). So where do you start? The first
ticket drop will be a year before the Olympics, with announced drops to follow.
The best drop will be the first one, with the most low cost options in one
drop.
The first step is to prioritize which events you want to
see, and how many tickets you need for each event. A good way to do this is to
go to the Olympic website, and make quick calendar of which events are on which
days. Check out your country’s Olympic site to find out who your best athletes
are, and which events they’re likely to medal in to determine the medal rounds
that will be worth paying a little extra for a medal round. Consider an event
that is really representative of the country you’re visiting for the Olympics,
and that you’re less familiar with, like Russia and the biathlon, or Brazil and
soccer. Send the list around to your group, and find out which events appeal
most to them. Then prioritize. Your list might look like this:
Women’s Downhill (4) Wednesday, February 8, 1:20 p.m.
Men’s Luge (4) Thursday, February 9, 5:15 p.m.
Men’s Curling (4) Friday, 10:20 a.m.
The event name, date and time are all important to include
in the list.
Everyone who is planning to attend should set up an account
with the official ticketing agent of their home country. Having friends from
different countries helps here, because each country gets an allocation at each
ticket drop, so a different country might have better access to a particular
event. In the USA, Cosport handles the ticketing.
Once you have an account, you will receive notifications of
when ticketing windows will open. Everyone attending should mark this time in
their calendars. EVERYONE needs to be working on tickets at that time. It will
be very difficult for one person to get more than one set of tickets for one
event in a ticketing window. It’s a team effort, and part of the beginning of
the Olympic excitement!!
The day before the ticketing window, get your list ready.
Assign each person trying for tickets ONE primary event to start with, to
ensure that you’re grabbing different things as soon as the window opens.
Login to the site in advance, and start refreshing. Ping
everyone reminders, to make sure you’re not working alone.
Once the ticketing window opens, you can search two ways, by
event, and by date. If you have a priority event you’re looking for, go for
that event first. It will list the different days and times, and the prices for
each type of ticket. None of these should be a surprise at this point, because
you can look up pricing in advance of the ticket window. This is where your
list is helpful, because some events may have several times even in one day. Select
the event you’d like to go to, and the number of tickets you would like. If you
need 4 and there are only 2, remember that it’s possible that in the future you
could get two more, and that two are better than none for high profile events.
Once you have your priority event, it’s time to go for an
all-out grab on anything else you might want. Basket times have lengthened recently,
so you’ll have a bit of time to instant message your friends after you’ve
grabbed everything that you can. Grab extras of other priority events. If you
have a naughty friend, or their credit card gets rejected, or they get asked
for a visa code they can’t remember, you have a backup plan. Grab cheap seats
at events on days that you don’t have a prioritized event. Some can go for as
little as $25, and you’ll still be at an Olympic event.
It will only take a few minutes to get to the point where
you have about everything you might want. It’s time to IM your friends. They
should be at the same point as you. Confirm what they have, and determine what
everyone is buying. This is also a good time to look for single tickets if one
person was a few short for an event. Buy one cart at a time, and dump the
tickets you don’t need as you go.
Good Luck getting tickets (especially if you’re cheering for
Team USA)!
