Ticketing troubles all part of the money game

By PETER CALDER

If it costs a fortune to stage the Olympics, there is plenty to be made as well.

The New South Wales state government, in partnership with private developers, has financed the building of the permanent venues.

But the event itself (September 15 to October 1) is the responsibility of the Sydney Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (Socog). Operating on a budget of almost $3 billion, it seeks to cover costs by selling television rights, sponsorship and official supplier deals, sale of consumer products - everything from caps and clothing to keyrings and stubbie holders - and tickets.

For much of the past six months, ticket sales have been a running sore as ineptitude has piled on downright deceit.

In a land where sport is a passion, verging on a religion, the Minister for the Olympics in the New South Wales government, Michael Knight, and his officials, committed the ultimate sin - they denied tickets to the general public, who had been promised the best access in the history of the event. Instead, they put them into high-priced "premium packages" to be sold to the wealthy or given to MPs and their guests.

Prime Minister John Howard said people had been "very badly misled and let down" - and red-faced officials put 500,000 tickets back into the general pool after they were threatened with an audit by the Australian Consumer Commission.

Several hundred thousand more tickets became available when the national Olympic committees which had ordered and paid for them sent them back for a refund when they proved impossible to sell at home.

The ticketing scandal was the last in a series of problems. In June, Phil Coles, an Australian member of the International Olympic Committee, resigned amid allegations about bribery of IOC members.

Then Socog outraged locals by inviting 1500 Japanese and American youngsters to join a marching band in the opening ceremony - then caved into pressure and withdrew the invitations.

But ticketing has still been the single most murky and ill-managed aspect of the preparations. Observers in Australia suspect Socog has been attempting to manipulate public demand by suggesting that events were sold out - or in danger of selling out - when that was far from true.

An early release issued by Socog suggested that not a seat was available for the handball - an obscure sport and hardly one of the hot tickets.

That is no longer true, if it ever was, but the suggestion is that Mr and Mrs Aussie Battler, looking at a programme increasingly festooned with "Sold Out" stamps, would see their chances slipping away and be panicked into buying something, anything.

Malcolm Beattie is the managing director of Sportsworld International, the only official distribution agent on this side of the Tasman (although Air New Zealand-bonded travel agents can sell travel-and-ticket packages).

He comments diplomatically that ticketing has been "different from" previous events - he has done summer and winter Olympics since 1984 - and, when pushed, says it has been frustrating.

In Sydney, Socog's coordinator of media information, Scott Crebbin, says that around 5 million of the 9 million seats on sale for the 16 days of the Games will be sold to Australians.

Ticket prices have attracted their share of criticism, too, although Mr Crebbin notes that the prices did not deter applications. Some 317,000 people applied for seats, and in some cases demand outstripped supply by 10 to one.

"There has been a lot of talk about price, but there's been no shortage of people prepared to pay."

He does concede that Socog "gave too much indication that people were likely to be successful" in their ticket applications, and that is what has caused some of the criticism.

Over here, Mr Beattie says there are still plenty of opportunities for New Zealanders keen to visit the Games, although tickets for opening and closing ceremonies have long since sold out.

At almost $1800 each, they were not a big seller here anyway, except in some of the top-end package deals. The average spend of a ticket-only buyer was around $600, says Mr Beattie, "which means there haven't been a lot of $1800 opening ceremonies in there."

But there are plenty of tickets left for those who want a taste of the Olympics - "You can go to just about every event. You may not see Kieran Perkins swim in the final but you can see him swim in the heats."

The habit of requiring punters to buy a ticket to a low-profile event for every ticket to a big show has irked some buyers, but Mr Beattie explains that the practice has been common for 20 years.

"It's the only way the organisers can get rid of their archery tickets," he says, "or baseball, morning one, Croatia v Romania, or Greco-Roman wrestling - who wants to watch two guys who don't even move for eight minutes on the floor?"

The ticketing practice and the steady infiltration of the Olympics by glamour sports like basketball, football and tennis raise the question of whether traditional (and unpopular) Olympic sports will eventually be shouldered aside.

"I think the traditional sports will remain because they are the fabric of the Games," says Mr Beattie. "But they are not the tickets corporate people want. They want to see the Dream Team and Ronaldo and Agassi. They don't want to see the table tennis, and they never will."

Whatever else might be said about the Games, they seem certain to be history's most environmentally sound. All the buildings and facilities at Homebush Bay (including the Ibis and Novotel Hotels and the athletes' village, which will be sold as townhouses after the Games) are highly energy-efficient. Solar panels drive many external lights, stormwater is gathered for irrigation and sewage is treated on site.

Translucent roofing, light wells, ventilation and insulation have been design priorities everywhere. The ceiling of the SuperDome is stuffed with old phone books, shredded and treated with fire retardant.

No private cars or even taxis will be allowed on the site during the Games. Public transport will be frequent - and event ticketholders will ride free.

The Homebush Bay site itself is something of an environmental fairytale. The only piece of land in city limits big enough to accommodate the Olympic complex, it had a long industrial history - as a saltworks, the state abattoir, a brickworks and a rubbish dump - and was discovered during preparations to be contaminated by dioxin.

Nine million cu m of waste were consolidated and capped, and a leachate treatment system set up to protect creeks and the nearby Parramatta River. A 10-year cleanup has resulted in the creation of the 450ha Millennium Parklands, rich in birdlife.

Plans for the development of the old brickpit were changed to protect the habitat of the striking green golden bell frog, which was discovered there in 1992. Its home at Homebush is one of only 19 breeding sites in Sydney.

The only shadow looming over the green Games has been criticism of the choice of McDonald's and Coca-Cola as major sponsors. McDonald's will have seven (count 'em) outlets on the Homebush Bay site, and the environmental group Greenpeace has criticised the two companies as dirty sponsors because their refrigeration systems will use hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), which have been connected with damage to the ozone layer and global warming.

The two companies have fought back, saying that neither the technical nor servicing expertise exists in Australia to get commercial coolers using alternative hydrocarbon refrigerants on the site.

But Greenpeace spokesman Corin Millais says the companies have known about the Olympics' environmental guidelines - which call for HFC-free games - since 1992.

"They have had a lot of time to develop a process. They have forgotten about the green Games in their race for marketing and profits."