It pays to procrastinate, Oly fans learn

Procrastinators who waited until the 11th hour may just make off with some of the hottest face-value Olympic tickets.

The Salt Lake Organizing Committee on Monday released the remainder of 70,000 excess tickets to the public.

The leftovers are what remain of the new stock SLOC made available Wednesday to past ticket buyers, those who unsuccessfully sought to purchase seats, and organizing committee employees and volunteers.

Since Wednesday, 22,510 of the 70,000 tickets were sold, netting SLOC an additional $3 million. The new sales mean Salt Lake's 2002 Games has the highest percentage — more than 80 percent — of tickets ever sold for a Winter Olympics with four months until opening ceremonies.

"It's a good result," said John Bennion, managing director of Games services. "We still have a few months to go; typically a huge part of tickets are sold close to the Games."

SLOC President Mitt Romney said recent military action in Afghanistan likely won't affect ticket sales.

"Sales are impressive today as well," Romney said Monday.

Also, SLOC launched a new advertising campaign designed to target ticket buyers across the nation. The campaign began with a full-page ad in Monday's USA TODAY.

The new ticket stock includes speedskating, gold-medal rounds of men's and women's ice hockey and two figure-skating packages that will include some luxury box seats.

The tickets can be purchased at SLOC's Web site, www.saltlake2002.com or by calling 1-800-TICKETS.

Starting Oct. 15, whatever tickets aren't purchased on the Web or by phone will go on sale at SmithTix across Utah.

In addition to selling tickets online, via phone and at SmithTix, some select tickets will be auctioned at eBay to the highest bidder.

Olympic organizers have been criticized in the past for auctioning some of the best seats to popular events. A pair of front-row seats to men's figure skating with a face value of $750 went for $11,100 in an online eBay auction.

The 70,000 tickets became available when the various national Olympic committees worldwide returned extra tickets. Also, additional seating was created when SLOC finalized its venue seating configurations.

The release of tickets Wednesday was plagued initially with a flood of callers that caused the phone lines and Web site connections to jam up in the first three hours, SLOC chief financial officer Fraser Bullock said. However, the flow eventually evened out during the day. On Thursday, second-day sales dropped to 10 percent of Wednesday's volume, Bullock said.

Public ticket sales began one year ago with prices ranging from $20 to as much as $885 for a seat at the opening or closing ceremonies at the University of Utah's Rice-Eccles Stadium.

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