\u201caffordable\u201d<\/a> for locals, could cost a small fortune. Tickets for a single seat at the opening ceremony were costing between $329 and $5,519, and the cheaper tickets were selling quickly. Some were able to buy up cheap $28 tickets for desired events such as the women\u2019s soccer semifinals but others saw comparable prices only for preliminary events and less popular sports such as badminton and judo.<\/p>\nTo add to frustration, some logging on during their time slots last week were booted off and routed to a webpage showing an \u201cAccess Denied\u201d message.<\/p>\n
Kirsten Simitzi, 50, of San Fernando Valley logged on at 10 a.m. sharp for her time slot Friday. But for 2\u00bd hours she got the error message and could not access the pool of tickets until 12:30 p.m., by which time, she said, \u201cthe pickings were slim.\u201d <\/p>\n
She expected to see more cheap tickets added by the time her mom had her chance over the weekend, or during her sister\u2019s slot on Monday. But tickets had only grown more expensive, she said. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey made it sound like, \u2018You\u2019re a local, you\u2019ll get $28 tickets.\u2019 But it didn\u2019t happen, the tickets were just gone,\u201d Simitzi said.<\/p>\n
Tickets are still selling at a rapid clip, a sign of the deep excitement over the first L.A. games since 1984.<\/p>\n
LA28 said in a statement regarding website errors that \u201cany issues that have been reported have not been widespread, and have been resolved.\u201d <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re excited by the level of interest and enthusiasm in LA28 tickets,\u201d it said. \u201cAt any point in time, fans who experience technical difficulty can reach us on any of our support channels to help facilitate a smooth experience.\u201d <\/p>\n
LA28 has said that tickets in the more affordable price ranges will be made available in future ticket drops, which will be open to those who don\u2019t live in the counties closest to the Olympic venues.<\/p>\n
LA28 said the 24% ticket fee on Olympics tickets aligns \u201cwith standard industry practices for ticketing live events\u201d and covers the costs of securely processing and delivering tickets. <\/p>\n
\u201cAll-in pricing is displayed upfront, included within the prices people see as they shop, and a breakdown of the price and service fees are provided at checkout for further transparency,\u201d LA28 said in an emailed statement.<\/p>\n
Pangan, 28, who lives in Torrance, felt confused that her friend who lives in Orange County was able to get desirable cheap tickets for swimming, track and tennis. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m happy for her, but I told her I feel very jealous. I should have asked her to buy tickets for us,\u201d Pangan said.<\/p>\n
Pangan said she will try her best for tickets again in future drops.<\/p>\n
Each fan is allowed to buy a maximum 12 tickets across all Olympic events with an additional 12 tickets for soccer matches. The opening and closing ceremonies have a maximum of four tickets per ceremony and those are included in the general 12-ticket maximum. <\/p>\n
Fans who won a time slot in this drop but didn\u2019t reach the ticket maximum will be automatically entered into subsequent ticket lotteries until they max out their ticket allotment. <\/p>\n
But the rules are somewhat confusing: LA28 clarified that even though fans have additional allotments for soccer tickets, if they hit their maximum of 12 Olympics tickets, regardless of the number of soccer tickets purchased, they will not be eligible for future drops.<\/p>\n
Ticket drops coming later this year at an as-yet undetermined date, will follow the same sequence as the first: A registration period that is free to enter, a random lottery that assigns time slots for purchasing and 48-hour time slots during which fans can log in to purchase tickets.<\/p>\n
Each drop has a wide swath of tickets across different sports, sessions and price points, but not every ticket is released at the same time. Future drops could have tickets to events that were unavailable or ran out during the first drops.<\/p>\n
It was easy for Harris Auerbach, 56, of Agoura Hills to get in the queue to purchase tickets during his Monday time slot, but when he and his wife, who were looking to purchase tickets for their daughters and some extended family, saw the cost of tickets for track events they \u201cwere blown away\u201d by prices \u201cin the stratosphere.\u201d<\/p>\n
And in particular Auerbach was shocked there were zero tickets available for the opening ceremony, while closing ceremony tickets started at $4,900 apiece before fees. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we found out about the 24% service charge, it was just sort of icing on the cake,\u201d Auerbach said. <\/p>\n
Auerbach, who grew up in the San Fernando Valley, said he remembers with fondness attending the 1984 L.A. Olympics, the festivity and camaraderie in the air. He wanted to recapture that experience, but said the sticker shock left a bad taste, and he does not plan to peruse tickets in future drops. His family, he said, will use that time and money to travel instead.<\/p>\n
Auerbach, who runs a thoroughbred horse racing and breeding operation, has been to myriad sporting events, including the Kentucky Derby, the NBA Finals and World Series, and he can\u2019t remember ever paying more than $400 for the Final Four men\u2019s basketball national championship. He said the prices would be prohibitive for people such as his wife, a teacher in the Los Angeles Unified School District.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know how they can go. I don\u2019t know how they can afford it. It\u2019s a missed opportunity for the Olympics and for the area,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
LA28 announced a fundraiser to give away tickets to locals<\/a>, but details on how they would be distributed have not been announced.<\/p>\nThe L.A. Olympics organizers said that about 5% of all tickets would be priced at more than $1,000 and that 75% would be under $400. But prices certainly seem higher than in past years. In the last Summer Olympics in Paris, tickets for the high-profile sport of swimming on a night of finals typically went for 690 euros. That\u2019s $795 in current U.S. dollars. The max price for swimming finals was 980 euros.<\/p>\n
Exorbitant service fees on tickets are unique to U.S. venues, and typically comes from the practice of bundling financing, distribution and venue costs into \u201cone opaque price,\u201d said Ahmed Nimale, a former Live Nation executive and chief executive at KYD Labs, a ticketing provider in New York City. In Europe, service fees are typically in the single digits.<\/p>\n
Nimale said the optics of the Olympics promising affordable tickets to local residents but on some counts failing to deliver show a need for a different system. Although the Olympics has enlisted multiple companies including AXS and Ticketmaster for a ticket resale platform that will open next year, that platform probably won\u2019t improve prices for fans, Nimale said, with tickets \u201cpriced up substantially\u201d on resale platforms.<\/p>\n
\u201cIs this the best experience? For fans to be priced out potentially due to higher fees?\u201d Nimale said. \u201cMy question is, are fans really getting the best shot to get tickets in the first place? There\u2019s a need for transparency here that\u2019s building.\u201d<\/p>\n
Times staff writer Jim Rainey contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Andie Pangan did not even conceive of the possibility she would fail to snag tickets for tennis or…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":713780,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[296783,296873,296874,296875,1582,276,296870,2576,1888,1627,296872,296876,2961,41509,224,5337,3777,58599,38518,296871],"class_list":["post-713779","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-service-fee","tag-ahmed-nimale","tag-andie-pangan","tag-angry-sticker-shock","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-comparable-price","tag-event","tag-fan","tag-final","tag-future-ticket-drop","tag-harris-auerbach","tag-la","tag-la28","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-olympics","tag-opening-ceremony","tag-ticket","tag-ticket-buying-time-slot"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116370180102842209","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713779","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=713779"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/713779\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/713780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=713779"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=713779"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=713779"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}