U.S. fans struggle to get tickets to 2010 Vancouver Olympics

Harsh news for Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic fans: If you don't have a ticket confirmation by the end of today, odds are you'll be dealing with a scalper.

The 2010 Olympics, even though they're more than 13 months away, are all but sold out.

Thousands of would-be U.S. ticket buyers hoping to attend the Feb. 12-28, 2010 Games were notified about the success of their ticket requests this week by CoSport, the exclusive U.S. ticket agency. And for most, the news wasn't good.

Some would-be fans who contacted The Times said they requested thousands of dollars' worth of tickets — up to the maximum number of 48 per person — only to be notified they're being issued only a few. And the vast majority of fans who requested tickets only for a single, favorite event apparently were shut out.

"The lottery for USA tickets to the Olympics was a huge joke," one disgruntled fan from Oregon wrote on Olympics Insider, The Times' Olympics blog.

The reader said his family, which has a time share in Whistler and planned to attend the Games, requested 96 tickets for a multitude of events and received only seven.

They might have been among the lucky ones. Many fans who had submitted requests received a form-letter e-mail this week inviting them to try again in February or March for what is expected to be a mad scramble for a handful of remaining tickets, mostly to less-desirable events.

Some fans who were shut out were befuddled because they had requested tickets only to some low-profile events, such as cross-country skiing and Nordic combined. Others who received tickets to a couple events spaced many days apart said they might not attend because hotel costs would be too high to justify the trip.

Others were almost relieved to learn their requests weren't granted, given the high cost. By the time CoSport, a New Jersey company with an exclusive ticket contract, added a 20 percent commission and other apparent markups to tickets, most were priced at least 30 percent higher than tickets being sold to Canadian residents. The agency also charges a $35-per-order shipping fee.

The U.S. allotment of roughly 48,000 tickets is about 3 percent of the 1.6 million total Games tickets.

That allotment initially stood at only 33,500 tickets before CoSport's parent company, luxury-Olympic-tour operator Jet Set Sports, transferred an additional 15,000 tickets from its own allotment to CoSport last month.

Jet Set Sports, which has a broad financial relationship with the Olympic movement through corporate sponsorship agreements with host committees, has sold expensive, all-inclusive Olympic packages since 1984. It continues to offer packages, priced between $2,000 and $9,000, to Vancouver events. Premium luxury packages that cost up to $34,000 per couple were sold out months ago.

Demand for individual Vancouver Games tickets was described as surpassing record levels. Canadians submitted requests for more than $345 million worth of tickets over five weeks, compared to $75 million in ticket requests over nine weeks before the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games.

VANOC said 120 of the 170 separate events required lotteries to determine ticket winners. More than 140,000 tickets were requested for the men's gold-medal hockey game alone. Face value for those seats was $350 to $750 in Canada.

Admission to the Opening Ceremony at B.C. Place ranged from $185 to more than $1,100 Canadian. Some of those seats were being advertised at $3,000 to $9,000 on ticket-resale Web sites this week.

In the U.S., CoSport received 14,179 ticket orders, with requests for 166,800 individual tickets, the company said in a news release. Forty percent of those requests came from Washington State, the company said.

CoSport has declined repeated requests by The Times for interviews or information since August. Thursday, an unnamed spokesperson wrote in an e-mail: "We have no further comment, except to say that there will be more sales phases in the future, once VANOC allocate more tickets to the U.S. public."

That allocation, expected to be made available for sale in February or March, is likely to be small.

Ron Judd can be reached at 206-464-8280 or at rjudd@seattletimes.com