The Great London Olympics Ticket Scam: State-Sanctioned Corporate Greed Wins
DID you get your tickets for the London Olympics in 2012? Did you miss out on tickets for the opening ceremony or the men’s 100 meters final. Do you know anyone who did get them? Do you work for one of the corporate sponsors or the IOC and didn’t have to go into the ballot?
Did you end up bagging seats at the canoeing and the badminton? And not cheap seats, mind, but really expensive ones that make watching a Premier League football match look like excellent value for money? Did you get lots of tickets for the wrestling?
Are you taking the kids? The tickets cost the same price as a week in a holiday camp – where you can watch what you are missing while you are at the wrestling or karate on a big telly. In close up. With a commentator explaining what the hell just happened and why he won and she lost.
Do have a clue what you paid to watch? Or are you one of the 250,000 people who wanted to see the Games but were not lucky enough to get a ticket?
Or did you buy your tickets through a foreign tour operator, like German firm Dertour, as part of a holiday package? These outfits are flogging tickets for events you wanted to see. Call it old fashioned and not as go-ahead as the 2012 ticketing scheme for docile Britishers, but paying for what you want – and only what you want – works for some.
You want a ticket to the 200meters men’s final? Well, it costs £132. That’s expensive. But it is also an event worth seeing.
But the biggest racket is that having paid a fortune to stage the Olympics in London, the locals aren’t being offered the tickets for free. Schoolchildren being whipped into a state of near enthusiasm for the Games by politicians and media are not able to afford to go, let alone find a sodding ticket to an event worth watching.
Mindful of all this greedy State-sanctioned corporate money making and scamming, we went along to the Coca-Cola London 2012 Olympic Torch Relay concert in London’s Westfield shopping centre. Yeah, because what is better for keeping minds fit and healthy than carbonated fizzy drinks?
Weed-smoking Dizzee Rascal was there to promote sugar, sport, the IOC and a thing called ‘Future Flames’ – “a nationwide search for the Best of British youth to carry the Olympic Flame”. Yeah, kids, they want you for the PR brochures.
You should apply now. Anorak will give a big prize to any youth lighting his ciggie or spliff on that guttering flame of dope…
Posted: 1st, June 2011 | In: Key Posts Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
