Olympic committee settles legal battle over ticket sales

In an odd twist in the ongoing wars over ticket sales for the Vancouver 2010 Olympics, Olympic organizers have settled a legal fight with a longtime unauthorized ticket seller — by giving that seller authorized tickets.

The settlement, announced this week by officials with the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC), ends a suit it filed last spring against Roadtrips, a Winnipeg, Manitoba, travel company that has sold luxury travel tours for 17 years.

The agreement includes a mechanism for Roadtrips, which found itself in a previous legal tangle after failing to deliver tickets to clients for the Beijing 2008 Games, to stay in the Olympic travel business. Except now it will sell tickets provided by an authorized dealer, Jet Set Sports.

The committee had accused Roadtrips of violating Olympic rules by selling tickets even though it wasn't an authorized dealer. VANOC sued to stop the company from selling 2010 Olympic travel packages and to identify the sources of Roadtrips' tickets.

Tickets resold by sponsors and some National Olympic Committees to scalpers are a major concern of Olympic organizers, VANOC officials have told The Times. They say the introduction of a middleman in the ticket chain leads to high prices and introduces the possibility for fraud. Indeed, some unauthorized online sellers sold tickets to the 2008 Beijing Games but never delivered them.

One of those companies was Roadtrips, whose owner, Dave Guenther, told The Times the Beijing incident was an "unfortunate circumstance" that occurred when a middleman failed to deliver tickets. In that case, Guenther also settled a lawsuit out of court, giving clients refunds and additional compensation.

After he was sued by VANOC over tickets for the 2010 Games, Guenther went on the offensive. He accused VANOC in a countersuit of legally harassing his company in a transparent attempt to protect an Olympic travel monopoly held by New Jersey businessman Sead Dizdarevic.

One of Dizdarevic's companies, CoSport, controls all ticket and travel packages in America. The other, Jet Set Sports, is the official travel-package provider for Canadian sponsors and the public for the Vancouver and London 2012 Games. Dizdarevic paid VANOC and the U.S. Olympic Committee tens of millions of dollars for that status.

Roadtrips also named Jet Set as a defendant in that countersuit, claiming it was conspiring with VANOC to keep it out of the ticket business.

"VANOC has been defaming us and misrepresenting facts and doing so in a calculated effort with Jet Set to preserve a monopoly," Guenther told The Times as part of a Times special report this week on ticketing for the 2010 Games.

Guenther said a confidentiality agreement prevents him from commenting on the lawsuit settlement with VANOC. The deal is unusual in that it effectively grants authorized Olympic tickets to an unauthorized seller.

"As part of the settlement, Roadtrips has agreed that, on a going forward basis, it will obtain all 2010 Winter Games tickets required for its customers from Jet Set Sports, VANOC's authorized ticket reseller in Canada," organizers said in a statement.

The deal might have come in exchange for information: Roadtrips divulged the name of a company in the Netherlands as a source of tickets, the Canadian Press reported.

VANOC officials did not respond to requests for interviews. But they previously have told The Times they planned unprecedented steps to crack down on the sale of tickets by unauthorized merchants.

Deputy CEO Dave Cobb has publicly threatened to invalidate entire allotments of tickets of sponsors or other groups found to have sold tickets to black-market dealers. Sponsors and other members of the "Olympic Family" get to buy tickets at face value ahead of the public.

Cobb told the Canadian Press this week that ensuring the validity of tickets sold by Roadtrips was organizers' greatest concern. That, he said, was "our number one reason for talking to Roadtrips and a number of other companies we've talked to about this issue."

He added: "This settlement with Roadtrips achieves that objective."

VANOC also has sued another unauthorized seller, Coast2Coast Tickets of Vancouver, but the case has sat idle for months. Games organizers have not filed legal action against a plethora of other Web sites offering Games tickets for sale at prices up to eight times the face value.

The organizing committee is expected to launch its own ticket-resale Web site within weeks.

Ron Judd: 206-464-8280, rjudd@seattletimes.com.