The rate of ticket sales for the 2002 Winter Olympics
"continues to surpass expectations heading into" tomorrow's
midnight deadline of receiving "preferential treatment in
seating allocations on successful orders," according to Mike
Gorrell of the SALT LAKE TRIBUNE. SLOC President Mitt
Romney said that ticket orders within the U.S. "topped" the
$40M mark this past weekend. Gorrell wrote that "what makes
this number particularly impressive is that SLOC projected
overall" U.S. ticket sales to be $68M, and "to achieve
almost" 60% of that goal in the first two weeks of the
ticket-sale campaign "delighted" Romney. The SLOC and
ticketing partner, Tickets.com, "devised a software formula
that allows anybody who orders in the first two weeks to
have their selections treated equally, as if they were
submitted on the same day." After the "first phase" of
ticket sales concludes on December 12 and the computer
"begins parceling out tickets through a lottery, seats will
be assigned based on the sequence in which orders were
submitted," and people who ordered early "will get better
seats than those who waited." Buyers will find out next
February what tickets they received. UT residents "continue
to account for" 39% of ticket orders, while CA residents are
second at 14%, followed by CO residents at 5% and ID
residents at 4% (S.L. TRIBUNE, 10/22). Also in UT, Lisa
Riley Roche wrote that 17,000 "potential buyers had
downloaded the ticket forms" as of Friday. Romney added
that plans to spend $750,000 in advertising on the SLOC Web
site "may be scrapped." Riley Roche noted that ads will run
after Thanksgiving in USA Today and SI in "space that's
being donated through sponsorship deals" (DES. NEWS, 10/22).
