Vancouver 2010 Olympics ticket sales soar

Sports Features Communications
LAURA WALDEN

TAMPA, Jun. 07: Vancouver Olympic organizers report stellar ticket sales for the second allotment that was made available on Saturday. The men’s gold medal hockey final was the first to sell out with the 1,000 tickets getting snatched up in mere minutes.

Opening Ceremony tickets, speed skating and figure skating were next in line among the first tickets flying out the doors for events. Preliminary Ice hockey, curling and the victory ceremonies tickets are still available.

Canadians submitted orders from every province and territory in record numbers, with more than 22,000 requests for 130,000 tickets processed in the first four hours.

"We anticipated demand would be high for tickets, and the level of interest we saw today was very exciting and, once again, a testament to the pride and support Canadians continue to show in being part of Canada's Games in 2010," said Caley Denton, VANOC vice president, ticketing and consumer marketing.

"Thanks to the incredible work by our partner tickets.com, our system performed as planned on the technical side. After 10 am Saturday, our www.vancouver2010.com website experienced traffic of more than 1,300 hits per second and by noon had set a record for page views at more than 5 million."

Denton added, "The virtual waiting room system worked well and helped manage traffic demand on our site effectively while keeping the process fair for consumers."

Fans looking to purchase tickets for the Paralympics Winter Games will be able to buy online at www.vancouver2010.com in the coming days as they are temporarily unavailable at the moment.

According to an update late January this year organizers project ticket sales at $260M for all the events.

Warnings have been made public about purchasing through unofficial channels. The only official sources for Canadians to buy Olympic tickets are www.vancouver2010.com and through official 2010 Winter Games hospitality partners Jet Set Sports and CoSport.

Vancouver organizers will also launch a third, smaller phase of ticket sales this fall.