Last year in June we called the Olympic ticketing system
a game theory scam, it was clearly designed to maximise price per seat sold, and play on Olympic fervour to hopefully get all the bums on faux-shortage priced seats - but we never guessed that they would take it to its (il)logical conclusion and price the public out (and have a shut-down-whenever-tickets-were-supposedly- available ticketing system ) while handing out huge amounts of the best tickets to the Sponsors and the rest of the Olympic
"Family" for free, to squander at their leisure (the game theory of handing over huge amounts of these most precious temporary goods for free is absolutely incredible). Unfortunately things have come home to roost, as those best tickets are precisely the ones most visible by the absence of bums on them. Lord Sebastian Coe, LOCOG (London Olympic Organising wotsit), says that only 8% of tickets are owned by sponsors, and the public have 75% of them, and that the venues are "stuffed to the Gunwales".
Sadly for him, many of the venues are very visibly (as in 24/7 TV visibly) far, far less than 75% full (its typically
only the gunwales that are stuffed), and anyway 75+8 does not = 100%, making us wonder where the other tranche of 17% of all tickets are (Mind, you, given their accuracy at budgeting for the Olympics I'd not be surprised if LOCOG thought 75+8 did equal 100). Now according to LOCOG itself, in the vast majority of the venues, at least one-fifth of seats are reserved for sponsors, officials, the media and the "Olympic family". In the most popular sessions, such as the opening ceremony and the 100m final, the proportion is closer to half so between "Family" and Sponsors - that's probably 25% accounted for, but by my reckoining many those events are far more than 25% empty.
But lest we forget, the Official Sponsors have put in about £1.8bn of a c £13bn spend, the British taxpayer is footing the rest of the bill - some £11.2 bn, or c £500 per taxpayer, i.e. about 80% of the bill. By my calculation that means the average British taxpayer has pre-paid for quite a lot of tickets already, never mind being asked to pay again for them! And its not that people still wouldn't pay for tickets - many are desperate to get in to seee events they couldn't get tickets for, (competing athletes were not even given tickets for their own families, which shows just where they rank in the Olympic "Family") but there are just no tickets available, despite all these empty seats. The result is huge numbers of frustrated Brits who couldn't (and still can't) get tickets, and huge numbers of empty seats. Last week LOCOG bussed in the Army because they screwed up on security, this week they are bussing in the troops to sit in the empty seats (see
pictures here)
Anyway, this being Sunday the muse is upon me, so with humble apologies to Pete Seeger I offer this ditty in the spirit of the Broadside (not Broadsight) ballads of yore:
Where have all those tickets gone?
A long time passing
Where have all those tickets gone?
From so long ago?
Where have all those tickets gone?
Gone to "Family", every one (1)
When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn
Where have all the Family gone?
A long time passing
Where have all the Family gone?
From so long ago?
Where have all the Family gone?
To bank their profits, every one (2)
When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn
Where have all the profits gone?
A long time passing
Where have all the profits gone?
From so long ago?
Where have all the profits gone?
To tax-free havens, every one (3)
When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn
But where have all the losses gone?
A long time passing
Where have all the losses gone?
For many years starting now?
Where have all the losses gone?
Gone to Taxpayers, every one (4)
When will we ever learn, when will we ever learn
While the athletes will do their best to make the actual Olympics Games as exciting and inspiring as ever, I think this Olympics (TM) has been the one where the
iron claw of commercial interest has not even bothered to put on the velvet glove (unless you count the opening ceremony, that is). Its almost a replay of the the private gain, public loss strategy so beloved once - but the world has wised up a bit to that one since 2008.
Update - as @
gpieterz points out, the ticketing has not been "freely commercial" enough, ie there is no incentive for those given freebie tickets to recycle them by selling them. I guess this makes the Olympic Game Theory board a sub-optimal combination of Cronyism, Commercial Profit Maximisation and crude "Let the Taxpapyer pay" optima. What they failed to see was that if you sub-optimise for your own benefit in a country with a free press, sophisticated media, and whose citizens have recently bailed out other "we profit/you pay" models, and paid a lot of money towards funding you, you run the risk of a major issue breaking out all around you. Adam Smith was missing from the Opening Ceremony "Potty History Of Britain Show", which is a shame, as
he noted c 300 years ago that "The class power of wealth and big business makes the elite the "principal architects" of policy, "an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it"." Replace Oppress by "Rip Off" and I think we have it.)
(1) Well
officially the public have 75%, as those empty seats testify...not. See point above on c20% for the "Family" and venues being more than 25% empty. There are apparently 100,000 tickets still for sale - good luck in getting one (assuming the ticketing system doesn't crash) that is not ludicrously overpriced.
(2) Well
not every one, to be fair - some people pitched up, but he IOC grudgingly admits that many VIPS barely leave their hotels (I'm surprised there is not a Zil lane to Harrods). According to
the Torygraph "Up to 70,000 of those tickets could be simply thrown away, The Daily Telegraph has learnt, because it is not cost-efficient for ticket agencies to return them, while another 50,000 premium tickets are being held back by foreign ticket agencies hoping to make a killing by selling them at grossly inflated prices at the last minute". (Update - arrested touts are selling tickets at the Olympics from foreign "Family" members.)
(3) OK, maybe some will go through ordinary banks - but how much will come into British coffers to help offset the taxpayers' losses? (See point 2 above)
(4) The Olympic budget ballooned from c £3bn to £11bn but we have apparently come in "under" budget at a mere c £9bn
