A steady, heavy rain fell on Victor Diaz as he walked up and down the sidewalk outside Wukesong Indoor Basketball Stadium three hours before yesterday’s USA-China game.

“I need one ticket,” shouted the 29-year-old from Austin, Texas, whose only protection from the rain was a Beijing 2008 baseball cap and a black San Antonio Spurs jersey. “Anybody got one ticket?”

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Diaz has gone to four Olympic Games without having tickets and always was able to buy them from scalpers outside the venues. But trying to score a seat to yesterday’s USA-China game wasn’t so easy.

He was one of a half-dozen Americans attempting to buy tickets to last night’s game outside the stadium, and like others, he found the prices steep, the process slow and the risks high. None of that came as a surprise.

“This is the biggest basketball game in China ever, so I knew tickets would be tough,” Diaz said. “They could play this game in an arena with 1 million seats and it would still sell out.”

China has very strict laws against ticket scalping. Police have told the Chinese media that ticket scalpers can be put in jail for 10 to 15 days and possibly entered into a re-education camp where they must do manual labor. That’s made getting tickets to popular events difficult in Beijing.

This is the first Olympic Games to reportedly be completely sold out in the last decade. Some people waited in line for three days to buy tickets to Olympic events, 58 percent of which cost $13 or less, and they are hesitant to part with them. Still, deals can be had.

Despite the detention risks that sellers faced, tickets are available in Beijing. Diaz said he bought tickets to tennis and volleyball for double face value — less than $30 — earlier in the day. But the ticket he really wanted, he couldn’t get.

As he walked down the street with one finger held high, a man approached him holding an umbrella. The man pulled out a cell phone and typed in a number before showing it to Diaz — 10,000 Yuan, or $1,400.

“No way,” Diaz said, shaking his head.

The deal was consistent with the prices most sellers were asking. Shortly before the start of the first game of that night’s ticketed sessions, seats in the A section, which showed face value of $150, were being offered outside for $4,000. Seats in section C, which originally sold for roughly $15, buyers said, were being offered for $700 to $1,120.
“If I can get someone down to $200, I’ll do it,” Diaz said.

The Texan wasn’t the only one looking for prices to drop. Tyler Chen and Andy Sun, who were haggling with sellers in Mandarin, were looking for prices to drop to the same level, but prices weren’t moving.

“I just don’t know how the market works here,” Sun said. “Do I want to wait until 8 o’clock or stand in the rain until 10 o’clock to buy tickets?”

Sun was convinced prices would drop, but the more it rained and the more stagnant ticket prices remained, the more frustrated he became.

“I think I’m going to just go find a sports bar, get something to eat and watch the game there,” Sun said. “This is a pain.”

After another half hour of looking, he gave up and decided to leave.

Chen, who bought a ticket to the game online for $3,500 from a guy he found on a classified Web site, turned to go into the stadium.

“Instead of coming down, prices started going up,” he later said. “It wasn’t worth it.”