Olympic Ticket Hurdle

It is not easy to get into the Olympic Games. Once you won the option to buy tickets for the Games the 'hurdle run' starts. You need to fill out forms, bring your passport to a pick-up point at a certain pick-up time. If you are out of town, you might send a messanger, but also with id and your copied documents etc. If you have a middle name there is confusion too.

Now, what if you have tickets - or at least will have them soon - but cannot attend the Games and want / need to re-sell? More hurdles... You can re-sell, but each ticket can only be transferred once. And most complicated are the Opening and Closing Ceremony tickets to transfer.

Here are some legal info that I received today from our friend Marc's legal counsel in Shanghai:

"The Legal Affairs Department of the Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad (BOCOG) has not issued ticket transfer policy yet.

According to Ticketing Centre of BOCOG, ticket transfer policy will be
issued very soon.

I googled some relevant info and hope it will be of some help:
Those who want to transfer tickets in a rightful way should pay for their tickets in advance. Any resale of Olympic tickets for profit, however, is illegal (!).

Ticketing Centre will handle the application to transfer the
tickets in July 2008 until 3 days before the competition or ceremony.

Tickets for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies are not transferable
indiscriminately. The transfer of tickets for the Opening and Closing
Ceremonies shall be approved by BOCOG and follow the procedure as
prescribed in ticket transfer policy. The deadline for opening ticket
transfer: August 4; deadline for closing ticket transfer: August 20.

The tickets shall be transferred only once. The transferor shall be the original ticket buyer. The transferor shall come to Ticketing Centre in person to transfer the tickets. No special requirements for the people who lives outside China. (...)"

Thank you Marc!

So regarding all these hurdles, we prefer not to re-sell and try to give the tickets back, if still possible (we are moving, otherwise we would go of course!). Otherwise we have someone who will buy all six tickets - so please don't email me anymore.

I hope that despite all the hurdles around the ticket purchasing and transferring the stadiums will be full with cheering fans! I know, it is all for our own safety. And I am pretty sure that these will be the safest Games ever!