“Affordable” LA Olympics tickets arrive with $5,000 seats and a 24% convenience fee
Los Angeles promised a hometown Olympics that locals could actually attend, then opened ticket sales with $5,000 seats, vanishing “cheap” options, and a 24% service fee. Nothing says community celebration like getting priced out of your own city.
Customers were shocked to find that tickets for LA28, which officials billed as “affordable” for locals, could cost a small fortune. Tickets for a single seat at the opening ceremony were costing between $329 and $5,519, and the cheaper tickets were selling quickly. Some were able to buy up cheap $28 tickets for desired events such as the women’s soccer semifinals but others saw comparable prices only for preliminary events and less popular sports such as badminton and judo.
To add to frustration, some logging on during their time slots last week were booted off and routed to a webpage showing an “Access Denied” message.
Kirsten Simitzi, 50, of San Fernando Valley logged on at 10 a.m. sharp for her time slot Friday. But for 2½ hours she got the error message and could not access the pool of tickets until 12:30 p.m., by which time, she said, “the pickings were slim.”
I live in Los Angeles, and most of the folks I know who got a timeslot were unable to buy a ticket. Once they got into the system, they found every event they were interested in sold out, were plagued by “access denied” errors, or were offered super expensive seats they could never afford.
Honestly, the only thing more predictable than the sticker shock is the outcome: the Olympics come to your city, and you get to watch them the same way you always do: on TV, while someone else cashes in on the view.