Ticket talk dominated a news conference after VANOC's Wednesday closed-door board meeting because the 2010 Winter Olympics are far from sold out.
Deputy CEO Dave Cobb said 40,000 tickets remain from the Saturday domestic release of 125,000, including tickets to a dozen men's and women's hockey games, 10 curling sessions and seven victory ceremonies. A box office opened Wednesday at the UBC Bookstore in Robson Square.
VANOC hoped to sell 100 of the Vancouver 2010 Club packages for $285,000 each, but only 40 have moved.
Ten luxury suites remain for B.C. Place Stadium and GM Place. Cobb said suites will soon be offered on an event-by-event basis.
VANOC hopes to earn $262 million from ticket and suite sales.
VANOC reached an out-of-court settlement with Winnipeg travel agency Roadtrips. Cobb said the company agreed to acquire any new tickets from VANOC sponsor Jet Set Sports, but said the terms of the settlement are mutually confidential.
Cobb brushed-off criticism from a Seattle Times feature series about New Jersey-based Jet Set and its sister company CoSport, which has a U.S. Olympic Committee-granted monopoly.
Cobb said Canadians received just 18,000 tickets for Salt Lake 2002, while the U.S. market got more than 90,000 for Vancouver 2010.
"We think we've been very fair with what we've allocated," Cobb said.
Meanwhile, frequent acting chairman Rusty Goepel was affirmed as successor to Jack Poole, who died of cancer on Oct. 23. Poole was posthumously named founding chairman.
Bob Mackin reports for Vancouver 24 hours.
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freebear
2 years ago
You'd think with the 'billions' of
Winter Olympic fans supposedly out there that all those wonderful 5 ring circus; orgy of taxpayer spending for less then promised economic benefits, tickets would be gobbled up! Burp!
southdeltawalker
2 years ago
Tickety tock-anyone seen the minutes?
We had anti-Olympic activist Chris Shaw here for an event last night.
One of the many shocking things he revealed that VANOC no longer takes minutes of their meetings.
These meetings are private but the minutes had to be submitted by agreement to the Olympic Secretariat which is of course is a BC Government agency. This way they were subject to Freedom Of Information- FOI-requests.
VANOC stopped taking minutes and the Olympic Secretariat stopped asking for them.
"Curiouser and curiouser...."