Wednesday 22 June 2011

Olympic ticketing disgrace reaches new depths

Well, with the revelation of what I've been 'lucky' enough to be allocated in the great Olympic ticket Fucky Dip, they've somehow served to make me even less happy with the way things have been done. Having applied for tickets for a wide range of sports, across a wide range of prices, across a load of different dates, I've been given precisely one pair of tickets for an early round of the handball. Nothing else. For the privilege of posting me these tickets, which they won't do until next summer but for which they've already taken the money, I've paid an additional £6. That's about as outrageous a piece of profiteering as you could expect to see anywhere.

But worse - in the same email, there was the reminder that there are 'still tickets available in football, wrestling, handball, volleyball and hockey', and that I can apply for tickets in those sports in the 'second chance' application process in the next few weeks. Well I'm intrigued that there are still tickets left in those five disciplines, given that I applied for tickets in four of them. There is no indication given as to whether the tickets which will be available soon are unallocated tickets from the first ballot, which I simply didn't get, or are new tickets held back from the first lot and only being made available now. Either way, it feels like they're gleefully rubbing my nose in it. My mind again goes back to the insistence of the organising committee that this is a process about which the public know more than any previously. What utter bollocks.

My partner has been similarly 'lucky' to have got two tickets for the closing ceremony. A fortunate woman, yes - plenty of people would be happy to get them, and indeed she is. But she's received absolutely none of the tickets she applied for in the actual events which make up the bloody show that the closing ceremony is closing. So we'll get to watch a bloody great parade of athletes, none of whom she'd have seen in the previous two weeks doing what they came to Britain to do, and possibly some highlights of the whole jamboree on the big screen, just, again, to rub her nose in what she's missed.

So, having completely disenfranchised everybody without a Visa card, anybody without access to the internet and anybody on a low income who would not have money in the bank in advance for these things, they're now going about disenchanting the very people with the actual damn tickets. What a terrific way to make the ticket holders feel good about the whole thing - handing out tickets scattergun to people in some bonkers lottery which leaves football fans watching dressage and archery fans watching wrestling, because that's how the draw came out for them. People will, as is often the way, have to sort this out for themselves, and get tickets for sports they actually want to see, through the ticket exchange website which will no doubt be set up by LOCOG for the ticket holders to deal with a mess which is not of their own making.

What an utter, utter fucking shambles. Expect to hear more declarations of how happy the organisers are with how it's going in the media any day now.

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