Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 24, 1994 TAG: 9407300013
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: ATLANTA LENGTH: Long
Right now, there are two things you can do:
Be patient.
Start saving.
It's less than two years until the Olympic cauldron will be lit at the Atlanta Games. From July 19 through Aug.4, 1996, more than 10,000 athletes will compete in the Centennial Games, and about 6 million spectators are expected to watch in person. More than a few of them will be from the Southeast.
Games officials are estimating 70 percent of the tickets will be sold within a 500-mile radius of Georgia's capital city. Roanoke is 425 miles from Atlanta by car, via I-81, I-77 and I-85.
If you want to purchase tickets, however, you'll have to wait until the spring, probably late May. That's when the Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games will begin its first of a three-tiered ticket plan with mail-order sales.
Scott Anderson, the ACOG's managing director for Games services, said details of the public ticket sales will be announced late in autumn. ``Very late,'' Anderson said.
``There's no way you'll miss it,'' he said. ``You'll find it everywhere. It will be announced in a major way.''
Before the public sale, the ACOG is taking ticket orders from its corporate sponsors and host hotels. Although the ACOG is working in tandem with hotels to create the first host-hotel program in Olympic history, most of the hotel-purchased tickets from the early sale will go to corporate customers.
Then, about 900,000 tickets are set aside for purchase outside the United States. Still, about 7.5 million seats are expected to be available for the public sale.
Anderson said the ACOG is committed to not exhausting the number of tickets for glamour events in the sales to its corporate sponsors and hotels.
Tickets not only will be readily available to the fourth Summer Games staged in the United States, but the Atlanta Games are offering the ``most available and most affordable tickets in the history of the Olympic Games,'' Anderson said.
Prices range from $6 to $250 for athletic events for 558 sessions of 37 sports in 29 disciplines. Tickets to opening and closing ceremonies are $200, $400 and $600. Ceremonies tickets for the best seats at the 1992 Barcelona Games were $500.
Only 5 percent of all 1996 Atlanta Games tickets are priced at $75 or more. The average ticket price is $39.72, and for the first time in Olympic history, the ticket price includes the cost of transportation - shuttle bus or rapid transit - during the Games. Every sport has at least one session with tickets available for $25 or less.
The record 11 million tickets on sale compare with 3.9 million for the Barcelona Games, 4.3 million for the 1988 Seoul Games and 6.9 million for the 1984 Los Angeles Games.
Comparing Atlanta prices with those charged at the 1984 Los Angeles Games shows that - after adjusting the 1984 prices for inflation and Olympic transportation - 90 percent of the Atlanta Games tickets are priced at or below the tickets for the same events in 1984.
The nine sports with tickets priced at $75 or more are the last session in athletics (track and field) and finals in basketball, boxing, diving, artistic gymnastics, soccer, swimming, tennis and volleyball.
``The ones that sell out routinely are what we call the `Magnificent Seven,''' Anderson said. ``That's the opening and the closing ceremonies and the finals in athletics, basketball, boxing, gymnastics and volleyball.''
That's the ticket
Late in the spring, the Olympic ticket plan will start when prospective customers pick up an order form at a retail outlet of an Atlanta Games corporate sponsor - McDonald's is a likely distributor - and choose from various options. The ticket forms also will include hotel information and reservation forms.
Anderson said tickets may be ordered through VISA - another ACOG sponsor - during a 60-day period for mail-order sales. The various plans will include a three-day package with hotel room or a venue pass, similar to a season ticket, which will admit the buyer to all sessions of one sport.
The ticket order form will include a brochure with prices and packages.
``It's simple,'' Anderson said. ``You decide what tickets you want for which days, figure up the price, and send in your order.''
Most purchasers will get what they want, and if a session of a sport isn't sold out, the ticket orders will be filled on a first-received, first-served basis. For those sessions that sell out - and Anderson said about one-third of the Atlanta Games sessions will do that - orders for those sessions will be filled by random computer selection.
``If a session is not oversubscribed during the mail-order period, then everyone gets seats, and we fill them in the order they were ordered,'' Anderson said. ``If the session is sold out, then we go to the random selection, and buyers will get confirmation back on what they will receive.
``If you didn't get a seat through the random selection, we'll tell you that and we'll also suggest other dates for sessions of that sport that may have seats available. Sure, we'll try to convince buyers to look at other sessions.
``What we'd like people to realize is that if you want to see medals awarded, you don't have to wait until the last three days of the Olympics. For instance, on Day 1 [July 20], there will be 15 gold medals awarded. There are 17 different sessions of athletics, or track and field, and the potential for seeing an Olympic or world record is there at every one of them.''
Anderson added that at the Atlanta Games, ``people will see sports they've never seen before, a sport like team handball, for example, maybe whose virtues are yet to be identified. Tickets to most sessions of most sports will be available. That's the main thing for people to remember.''
After two months of mail sales, in September 1995 the ACOG will enter the second phase of its ticket program, with phone sales. Purchasers may call an ACOG number and not only buy tickets, but also arrange hotel accommodations. And the best way to get a room - ``unless you have an aunt or a cousin living in Atlanta,'' Anderson said - will be through the ACOG.
Phone sales will continue into May 1996, and Anderson said it's important to buy before then for another reason besides ticket availability. Those who purchase tickets through the mail or phone sales will receive a souvenir-quality ticket. Those who buy on site, from June 1996 until the end of the Games, won't get those souvenir tickets.
Although purchasers will get a confirmation statement on ticket purchases, no actual tickets will be delivered to buyers until June 1996. How they will be delivered may not be revealed before delivery, although it's likely another of the Atlanta Games sponsors - who have paid up to $40 million each to be an ``official sponsor'' - will be involved in the process.
Once the Games begin, the ACOG will bring another Olympic first to ticket sales. At past Games, a ticket purchaser had to physically go to the venue he wanted to visit the next day for an event to get a ticket. In Atlanta, tickets for all venues will be available not only at all other venues, but also at Olympic ``collector lots'' for parking adjacent to the city's perimeter expressway, I-285.
Staying power
``The first thing most people will want to know when they get tickets is if they can get a hotel room,'' Anderson said. ``We'll be able to help them with that, too.''
The Games of the XXVIth Olympiad will be the first with a host hotel network. What that means is that to make a hotel reservation, Olympics visitors likely will go through the ACOG. Already, many hotels tied into the ACOG network are not accepting reservations during the Olympics' 17 days.
The ACOG has commitments from more than 200 hotels for 44,000 hotel rooms per night within a one-hour drive of Atlanta or the other Olympic venues, such as Athens, Savannah and Columbus. The room number grows weekly as hotels sign up. The ACOG asks hotels to turn over 80 percent of their room block for the 17 days to the ACOG network, with the other 20 percent set aside for the hotel's ``regular'' corporate customers.
In an effort to limit price gouging, hotels in the network are required to set their room rates when they sign with the ACOG. The ACOG guarantees no network hotel will charge more than its per-room rack rate, plus 5.75 percent for two years of inflation.
The Olympic Games Host Hotel Network has Georgia legislation for muscle. Any hotel the ACOG finds to be gouging may be fined up to $1,000 per room, per night.
``Most rooms will range in price from $85 to $350, depending on the hotel, [plus] 5.75 percent,'' Anderson said. ``So, if you get one of our hotels' rack rate today, you can figure out what the rate will be during the Olympic Games.''
Also, the ACOG has just started to build a list of private residences - single-family homes, apartments and condominiums - in which Olympic housing will be made available. Then, there's another potential network.
``There's a segment of the Olympic ticket buyers that will stay with an aunt, cousin or in-laws,'' Anderson said. ``Those people won't need rooms, but they'd be wise to buy their tickets early, too. And if it's the Olympic experience they're looking for, I'd suggest buying to a cross-section of events.''
Besides tickets and hotels, the other Olympic concern for spectators is transportation to venues. That won't be costly in Atlanta. When a ticket is purchased to a sports venue for a particular date, that ticket will allow the holder onto the ACOG transportation system for that date.
The system will include about 2,800 buses and the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) and its 32 miles of rail line. Although not part of the ACOG system, Atlanta also has 1,600 taxis, a number sure to grow in the next two years.
Many of the buses in the ACOG system will be new. The committee has gotten commitments from several manufacturers and cities to use new buses. In other words, if Cleveland orders 15 buses for its system, those buses will be delivered to Atlanta and ridden first at the Olympics, then driven to their city of destination.
Olympic officials hope the collector lots, combined with a bus-rail system, will limit the number of cars inside the I-285 circle freeway, and particularly inside what's being called ``the Olympic Ring.'' Besides parking and tickets, food, beverages and souvenirs will be sold at those lots.
The ring is an imaginary circle around downtown Atlanta, with a radius of 1.5 miles from the Georgia World Congress Center, adjacent to the Georgia Dome. Eighteen sports will be played at venues within the Olympic Ring, which also encircles the Olympic Village and the 85,000-seat Olympic Stadium. MARTA serves all of the Ring's venues.
\ Fun and Games
One thing seems certain about the Atlanta Games.
They won't sell out.
``The Olympics never have sold out,'' Anderson said.
The record ticket sales percentage came at the Lillehammer Games in February, when more than 1.2 million seats took the Winter Games to 82 percent capacity. The projection for Atlanta is 62 percent, which would give the ACOG the $261.23 million it has budgeted among revenues for the $1.58 billion Games.
Really, you don't need a ticket to see the Olympics. Bob Brennan, the ACOG's press chief, marveled at how many Spaniards climbed to the hills toward Montjuic Stadium in Barcelona two years ago, just wanting to be part of the crowd, many of whom didn't have tickets.
Even if you want to see an event, you don't need a ticket. The men's and women's marathons, road cycling and race walking will be contested on Atlanta's streets. Line up on a curb for an Olympic experience. You'll see better than you will trying to catch a tiny gymnast from the top row of the Georgia Dome.
The main thing to remember is if you want to go to the Olympics, the ACOG is making it possible.
by CNB