2010 Organizers on lookout for ticket scammers

By Clare Ogilvie

Organizers of the 2010 Olympics are considering legal action against some Internet ticket purchasers.
“We have seen a couple (of transactions) that were very suspicious,” said Dave Cobb, vice president of marketing for the Vancouver Organizing Committee for the 2010 Games.
“They are being bought by ticket scalpers and they are with our legal people to see what our rights are not to sell to them.”
What VANOC and the International Olympic Committee say they don’t want to see is 2010 tickets for sale on the Internet through unauthorized sources. Only Jet Set Sports and sister company CoSport are authorized to sell Olympic tickets.
It was a hot topic during the IOC’s recent coordination commission visit.
“…It is very much a co-coordinated effort to protect consumers not only in Canada but around the world to make sure they don’t get taken by ticket scalpers, especially following what happened in Beijing,” said Cobb.
Leading up to the Summer 2008 Games in China thousands of people around the world were duped into buying non-existent tickets for the Games. In one case a British based rogue broker Xclusive went bust after selling 18,000 tickets.
It has been estimated that the Beijing scams globally cost Olympic fans close to $10 million.
The IOC and the United States Olympic Committee launched a lawsuit last July to shut down www.beijingtickets.com.
“The IOC can’t stress enough the importance of purchasing tickets through official and authorized sources only,” said IOC spokeswoman Emmanuelle Moreau.
“Sadly, there are some fraudulent dealers who are out to cheat fans, something we deplore.
“The IOC works closely with Games organizers and National Olympic Committees to try, as much as possible, to stay ahead of fraud schemes and remind sports fans to be sure to buy from authorized outlets.”
The first phase of ticket sales for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver and Whistler closed last Friday. Another round of tickets will be offered in the spring but many of the most in-demand tickets will be gone.
The danger on the Internet takes different forms. Some rogue brokers say they have tickets when they have none. Others have historically received tickets from sport organizations and Olympic sponsors that they don’t want. According to the BBC, the IOC reportedly investigated several national Olympic committees, including the U.S. and Switzerland, for re-selling some of their tickets to the Sydney 2000 Summer Games.
The Swiss Committee did not return an e-mail inquiry on the issue and the American Committee said a spokesperson could be available at a later date.
“(The tickets) mostly come from sport federations and sponsors and they are looking to sell them off,” said Anbritt Stengele, president and owner of Sports Traveler based in Illinois, USA.
The sale of tickets by the committees within a host country is a breach of IOC rules.
VANOC has vowed to stop this practice by tracing tickets that appear for sale on unauthorized sites back to their original purchaser. If an investigation finds the ticket sales violated a contract with VANOC, and therefore the IOC, the organization’s whole ticket allotment may be stripped from them.
Stengele is not offering 2010 tickets for sale, yet. She said the company is doing a brisk business with its accommodations and travel packages for now as it waits to see how VANOC’s position on third party ticket sales works out.
“I can see how they want to try and enforce that but it is going to be very difficult,” said Stengele.
“In terms of ticketing we haven’t really decided what we are going to be doing. If tickets become available through some of our sources then we may offer those to our clients but at this point I am not willing to say we are going to go in that direction.
“It is hard on the fans too. The fans want to go… I think we are going to have to wait and let it play out a little bit. We have had a tremendous interest for the accommodations and we have been selling those quite briskly so there is a demand for people to go.”
Gary Adler, general counsel for the Washington, D.C., based National Association of Ticket Brokers said buyers must beware.
“They should always pay with credit cards, they should do their homework and check everybody out, and if something is too good to be true it usually is, so beware,” he said.
The Association (www.natb.org) founded in 1994 to combat fraud in the industry is about to launch a new web portal — www.natb.com — on which all its members will be able to list available tickets.
VANOC has made its position on ticket re-selling clear to Olympic sponsors, sport federations and other members of the Olympic family said Cobb.
And anecdotally, he said, VANOC has seen a different pattern of ordering compared to previous Games.
“We believe that a significant number of the orders made by the Olympic family were modified after we communicated to them how we will be enforcing the contracts we have,” he said.
“Where we had information to keep our eyes open for certain organizations we did and we saw that orders compared to previous Games were significantly different.
“So we think we will have fewer of these organizations that will take the risk of losing all of their tickets for selling to scalpers so that will reduce the amount of inventory that gets into the hands of the tickets brokers.”
Cobb said VANOC is already looking at some ticket brokering sites to see if they are breaking any laws.
“There are a number of them that… in our opinion are breaking the law and our legal department is working with the IOC’s legal department right now on determining where and when we are going to take legal action,” he said.
“There continue to be numerous websites in the market place right now offering tickets for our Games for sale and I can just reiterate that none of them have tickets as nobody yet has a ticket. We haven’t even confirmed the orders of the Olympic family yet.”
Chris Rudge, CEO of the Canadian Olympic Committee, said as far as he knows the organization has never re-sold tickets for profit.
“We have never sanctioned the re-selling of our allotment of tickets, nor those of the national sport federations for whom we have often purchased tickets for in the past, as their agent,” he said.
But he admitted that he had heard of the practice.
“I have no direct evidence that it has ever gone on but I am certainly not naïve enough to believe that it didn’t happen on occasion.
“…It is certainly frowned upon by the IOC, but the reality is Olympic tickets can be very difficult to get hold of and it doesn’t surprise me that there would be some people who would break the rules.”
Being scammed is devastating said straight-talking Texas class action lawyer Jim Moriarty.
“…What I am seeing now is a very heightened sense of alertness on behalf of VANOC and the (2012) London Games Committee,” he said.
“It is way past time for them to get out there and defend their trademarks and for them to sit and watch these operations purporting to sell tickets that they cannot possibly deliver is outrageous.”
Moriarty, 62, was cheated out of $12,000 for Beijing tickets. He has launched a class action lawsuit against a Canadian company for allegedly failing to meet its obligations to provide tickets for the opening ceremonies of the 2008 Beijing Summer Games. And he is preparing to sue the IOC and the USOC.
Many of his clients are family members of athletes who competed.
“It is devastating to these families when they can’t go in there and watch their kids compete,” he said.