VANOCs Cure for Empty Seats

If you've paid any attention to the current games in Beijing or previous games in Turin, Athens, or Sydney, you've no doubt seen an epidemic of empty seats despite supposed "sell outs".

The problem stems largely from the large number of seats given to the IOC and individual NOCs. The number given to them is typically 30% for every event. But, as IOC members are very important they have better things to do than attend early rounds of competition, especially in some of the less popular events. Despite many empty seats inside the venues, people are still unable to acquire tickets.

VANOC wants to cure this empty seat epidemic and is going to use some novel methods to do so. First and foremost they plan to automatically cancel all tickets given to an individual countries NOC if they are found to have sold their tickets to ticket brokers. This is an often practised underhanded revenue practice that will not be tolerated. Barcode technology will allow VANOC to stem this problem.

Secondly, VANOC is pushing hard to minimize the number of tickets IOC members receive, especially in early round competition and to less popular events.

Third, VANOC will be trying to relocate IOC seats at events to less desirable locations to allow the paying customers to purchase the choice seats.

Fourth, VANOC plans to try to limit Press seats, at least in prime locations, as every press table will take up at least 3 paying seats.

Lastlyl, VANOC will be working towards allowing last minute purchase of un-used seats. Not sure how this will work, but it would be great if they could liquidate empty seats, sort of like Tickets Tonight, to those that want to fill them instead of just leaving have the venues empty like in early round Beijing competition.

The ticket sales process starts October 3, 2008.