Various event tickets will be available to the public Friday at 9 a.m. PST. (Getty Images)(ATR) Friday morning, tickets for various events and 12 medal ceremonies will go on sale, while later in the day Richmond Olympic Oval officially opens.
Thousands of Canadian residents' wishes came true Wednesday when they found out they are going to the 2010 Winter Olympics.
Precisely how many applications were chosen in the fall ticketing lottery is a closely guarded secret. Vancouver 2010 will not disclose how many tickets were actually sold nor will it comment on revenue until March when the quarterly report is issued for the period ending Jan. 31, 2009.
Anyone who already applied for tickets can go online at vancouver2010.com or call 1-800-TICKETS beginning Friday at 9 a.m. PST for a first-come, first-serve chance at what's left. Visa is the only payment method.
Tickets are available for eight outdoor events and various men's and women's hockey and curling preliminaries. Also on sale are tickets to the 12 B.C. Place Stadium medals ceremonies and concerts. Another domestic round of ticketing is planned for mid-2009. Tickets will be delivered in November 2009 by sponsor Purolator Courier.
VANOC CEO John Furlong claimed in a Nov. 13 Vancouver Board of Trade speech that $263.76 million worth of tickets was requested, including $103.21 million on the last day of the Oct. 3-Nov. 7 application window. More than 140,000 tickets were sought for the Feb. 28, 2010 men's hockey gold medal game, though less than 5,000 were available to the public.
VANOC ultimately hopes to raise $189 million from 1.6 million tickets.
VANOC pledged that the public could access 70 percent of tickets overall, but the public allotment for some events is as little as 30 percent of venue capacity.
International sports executives, corporate sponsors, athletes and their families, politicians and bureaucrats have special ticket privileges, but no discounts.
VANOC Cautions Buyers About Brokers
VANOC Vice President of Ticketing Caley Denton is warning against "taking a risk" by purchasing from ticket brokers. However, a partner of VANOC ticketing provider Tickets.com is already offering guaranteed tickets for sale.
StubHub.com is advertising tickets for opening and closing ceremonies, gold medal hockey, snowboarding and freestyle skiing. Top price is $5,499.99 for a lower bowl ticket to the Feb. 12, 2010 opening ceremony. VANOC was charging $910.
On its Web site, Tickets.com lists eBay-owned StubHub as a corporate partner.
"We have no relationship with StubHub," Denton said. "The only way anyone can guarantee (tickets) is if it comes from us."
Denton said VANOC is developing a secondary ticketing market for launch in 2009.
Unauthorized sales are a major issue among the Olympic movement. At least $6 million in tickets to the Beijing Olympics were not delivered to online customers by London-based Xclusive Tickets Ltd., which was not an IOC-recognized company. Five people were arrested in Nov. 26 raids by authorities in London, coinciding with the Beijing to London knowledge transfer sessions.
Dallas lawyer Jim Moriarty launched a class action lawsuit against a Winnipeg company after hundreds of people traveled to Beijing and never received tickets they bought to the 2008 Olympics' opening ceremony.
Roadtrips Inc. filed a Nov. 20 motion to dismiss the lawsuit because the plaintiffs received refunds.
"The parties' contracts required nothing more of Roadtrips," said Roadtrips' court filing.
Oval Rounding Completion
The Richmond Olympic Oval, which cost $145 million, celebrates its grand opening on Dec. 12, 14 months before the Games open. The Richmond Olympic Oval officially opens on Dec. 12. (ATR/B. Mackin)
The two-day celebration includes public skating sessions, performances by Quebec's Patin Libre and comedic tours of the site of long-track speedskating. CTV will broadcast the one-hour opening ceremony at 5 p.m. PST.
The 32,000 square meter arena will house 8,000 spectators. After the Games, it will be a multi-use sports and wellness center. The Vancouver 2010 anti-doping laboratory will also be on site and become a sports medicine clinic after 2010.
"We've charted new territory in what Olympic speedskating ovals can be after the games," said Cannon Design architect Bob Johnston.
Johnston said flight, flow and fusion were three key words that inspired the process. The building is on the heron-populated middle arm of the Fraser River, across from Vancouver International Airport. Richmond is a former farming community that has become a major destination for immigrants from Asia.
"Richmond has a history of large structures and this Oval is the newest one," he said.
The Oval will anchor a new riverside mixed residential and office community.
The Vancouver 2010 bid book originally had the Oval being built on the Burnaby Mountain campus of Simon Fraser University.
With reporting from Bob Mackin in Vancouver.
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