The only opportunity for most English to see the Olympics is to watch it on TV. To add insult to injury, when they are watching events on TV, they are noticing empty seats in every venue (even in gymnastics and swimming which are the most popular events and are held in smaller venues with fewer seats). Many of these seats have been held open for athletes, VIPs and sponsors. (This article goes into a bit more detail on the subject.) Some of these seats are finally being made available to the public.
In addition to making more tickets available, tickets for seats left vacant after the original ticket holder has left an event are now being re-sold for 5 British pounds (significantly less than the original ticket price). Most of the events have at least two games/matches. Many of the fans only come to watch their country compete. After that, they leave. This leaves many seats open during the following event(s)/match(es). Rather than leaving those seats empty, they are now being resold. (Apparently they have been doing this at Wimbledon the past few years.)
This process is made possible by the bar codes on the tickets. You have to stand in a line (or a "queue" as the English would say) and it takes a little while for the whole process to work and you may not get to see the entire following event, but for 5 pounds, who can complain?
I was able to use this process to see the second half of the second game of a handball session this evening and I think it worth every pence I paid for it.
Team Handball - Copper Box/Olympic Park
Women's Preliminaries - Group A
Croatia vs. Russia
Here's the link for the official Olympic handball page.
so interesting to have our man of the street - your blog has been so good! do you have tickets to the men's races Sunday? i am looking forward to those pictures! say hello to the gang for me! deb
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