Olympic empty seats

[mrbigshot]

I've been trying all day to get swimming tickets for tomorrow morning it says they're available, I go through selecting ages and that, I have the tickets in my basket and click 'request tickets' and then in says they're not available?

This happened to anyone else? Can anybody help me? Thanks.

 

[Lady Gull]

Wimbledon Centre court yesterday was virtually empty - I think a lot of the empty seats are corporate tickets that have been purchased but they are not being used!

I suppose unfortunately that is where the money was.

My friend managed to bag four tickets for the preliminary diving rounds at the Aquatic centre at £50 quid a ticket - so four tickets £200.00 plus the travel up there and something to eat and drink and a trip up the tower and a programme - got to be looking at the best part of £350.00 for 1.5 hours of entertainment!!! No thanks - happy to channel hop and watch it on the tv.

 

[Bozza]

I've been trying all day to get swimming tickets for tomorrow morning it says they're available, I go through selecting ages and that, I have the tickets in my basket and click 'request tickets' and then in says they're not available?

This happened to anyone else? Can anybody help me? Thanks.

That's happened to millions of people millions of time throughout the whole ticketing sale process. The tickets are either not available at all any more, or there is literally a single ticket and you're asking for 2 or more.

Regardless, those are not showing up for me any more (not that I want them) - only 2 swimming sessions showing - Wed 01/08 (evening) and Thur 02/08 (evening) at £295 per ticket.

 

[Herr Tubthumper]

Good let that be a lesson to them with the FARCICAL way that tickets were distributed AND only by visa payment. f*** off 2012.

You could only buy tickets with a VISA card? Are you serious?

 

[Bozza]

My friend managed to bag four tickets for the preliminary diving rounds at the Aquatic centre at £50 quid a ticket - so four tickets £200.00 plus the travel up there and something to eat and drink and a trip up the tower and a programme - got to be looking at the best part of £350.00 for 1.5 hours of entertainment!!! No thanks - happy to channel hop and watch it on the tv.

Our handball tickets were £60 each, including the one for my 2 year old.

Money well spent, IMO, just to have been there. The Olympic Park is an amazing place and it was good to spend most of the day there. I'd gladly pay similar (or more, actually) for something next weekend (has to be weekend due to where we live).

 

[Bozza]

You could only buy tickets with a VISA card? Are you serious?

Yep. It's not unusual for major sporting events over the past few years.

You can also only pay by cash or Visa for purchases on site. Every till has "We are proud to only accept Visa" very prominently displayed.

 

[Cian]

You could only buy tickets with a VISA card? Are you serious?

Due to sponsorship, yes. Some UEFA football events are or were tied to Mastercard for the same reason.

Apparently any pre-existing venues that had ATMs have had to cover them over, should someone dare use a Mastercard/bank-branded card to get money out.

 

[desprateseagull]

BBC News - Olympic tickets: My story

what about the non existant seats?!

 

[pigbite]

Off camping tomorrow to watch the sailing. Tent on cliff side at Ewlease which is the best viewing spot for the actual sailing (other than a RIB).

Cheapish given it's £30 a night to pitch in a field with a few compost crappers and solar showers.

At least we can have a fire, play guitar and drink without having to worry about offending Coca Cola or McDonalds.

 

[mrbigshot]

That's happened to millions of people millions of time throughout the whole ticketing sale process. The tickets are either not available at all any more, or there is literally a single ticket and you're asking for 2 or more.

Regardless, those are not showing up for me any more (not that I want them) - only 2 swimming sessions showing - Wed 01/08 (evening) and Thur 02/08 (evening) at £295 per ticket.

Swimming ones I wanted no longer up, however it was the same tickets come up time after time again so there must have been more the one up. I did try buying 1 ticket for the event but it still said no tickets found or something. Then when I went back the event was still listed! Never mind though

 

[Bozza]

Swimming ones I wanted no longer up, however it was the same tickets come up time after time again so there must have been more the one up. I did try buying 1 ticket for the event but it still said no tickets found or something. Then when I went back the event was still listed! Never mind though

As I said - this has happened millions of times to millions of people - it was widely reported in most mainstream media many times over. I've personally had the same hundreds of times over the past few months.

My theory, thinking about how they attempted to design the system in order to cope with cope with peaks of demand, is that there are essentially two systems at play. A front-end "what's available" and a back-end of actual tickets. These two systems are not in sync real-time, with the "what's available" system only being updated every hour or similar.

 

[Lady Gull]

Women's beach volley ball on now - that is pretty full - no wonder my son was after tickets for this event!!!

 

[clapham_gull]

When I saw the empty seats I assumed they were part of the 1901 package.

 

[Bert365]

I tried for velodrome didn't get anything ill be gutted if theres empty seat when that's on. I don't suppose anyone has 2 spare

 

[Superphil]

You're all wrong. Lord (sic) Coe has told us all today that the venues are all rammed.

Reminds me of comical Ali (?) 'all of our seats are now full'

 

[Czechmate]

When I saw the empty seats I assumed they were part of the 1901 package.

ooooohhhhhh that hurt ! but funny , from a 1901 member who's seats are always filled .

 

[catfish]

I do find it rather sad that people who genuinely want to attend any event have to miss out because of corporate beanfeasts. But, hey, that's life I guess.

 

[hitony]

Most of the venues are pretty full to be fair.

Really? even Wembley was half empty (or full whichever way you want to look at it) for a Team GB game, well I saw many empty seats around the ground anyway. Also center court of Wimbledon half full!

I will be very interested to see the next Team GBs game on Wednesday at the Millenium Stadium, I have really tried to get tickets for this as its very local for me and its a sell out apparently, I so hope it is, I will be right pissed off if its like Wembley was last night!!

 

[ROSM]

You're all wrong. Lord (sic) Coe has told us all today that the venues are all rammed.

Reminds me of comical Ali (?) 'all of our seats are now full'

Having been lucky enough to get basketball preliminary tickets in the ballot last year, I then lucked in to find we had the USA first match. Yesterday the centre which holds over 15k was rammed. We ended up getting moved from our seats which were right at the back of the top tier, to seats that were at the back of the lower tier (long story but involved my heavily pregnant wife having problems with the seats we were given). Our seats were used during the match. They had been reallocated to a group of soldiers.

As the game started I would say that there were no more than 100 empty seats in the arena.

However in our new seats, the three rows in front of us court side (and therefore most of the gaps and very prominent on tv pictures) were empty until just before the end of the second quarter. Then a whole party, guests of Omega, turned up. They caused an issue as some of their seats had people in them, they then eventually sat down after arguing in the row as to who was sitting next to who. Finally when they sat down with their Omega silver coats and t shirts, they then loudly discussed who wanted ketchup on their hot dogs, why they weren't going to be using the tickets they had that night for swimming 'because they weren't really interested in that' etc.

That is Lord Coe's problem. Omega pay loads for Olympic involvement, so how does he tell them where to go? The people were in the park, even in the basketball compound but just not in their seats.

 

[Vegas Seagull]

Having been lucky enough to get basketball preliminary tickets in the ballot last year, I then lucked in to find we had the USA first match. Yesterday the centre which holds over 15k was rammed. We ended up getting moved from our seats which were right at the back of the top tier, to seats that were at the back of the lower tier (long story but involved my heavily pregnant wife having problems with the seats we were given). Our seats were used during the match. They had been reallocated to a group of soldiers.

As the game started I would say that there were no more than 100 empty seats in the arena.

However in our new seats, the three rows in front of us court side (and therefore most of the gaps and very prominent on tv pictures) were empty until just before the end of the second quarter. Then a whole party, guests of Omega, turned up. They caused an issue as some of their seats had people in them, they then eventually sat down after arguing in the row as to who was sitting next to who. Finally when they sat down with their Omega silver coats and t shirts, they then loudly discussed who wanted ketchup on their hot dogs, why they weren't going to be using the tickets they had that night for swimming 'because they weren't really interested in that' etc.

That is Lord Coe's problem. Omega pay loads for Olympic involvement, so how does he tell them where to go? The people were in the park, even in the basketball compound but just not in their seats.

He's too late but putting all the corporates on the same side as the main cameras would stop the issue being highlighted in every shot which is causing more of an issue than it is