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Despite empty seats, Canadian jailed for ticket scalping at London 2012
With all the attention devoted to empty seats at London 2012 venues, it seems rather counterproductive that a Canadian who tried to resell two tennis tickets at face value ended up in the pokey.
At most North American sports events, it's quite commonplace to see a spectator sell an extra ticket or extra pair rather than having to eat the cost. Try it at the Olympics and it could result in a trip to the slammer, like it did for a Vancouver resident named Kenneth Gabe.
Officers became suspicious when they saw Gaba, who was on holiday in London from Vancouver, carrying a newspaper strangely.
Having followed him to a bus stop they saw another man give him £100 for the two tickets and swooped to arrest him.
The Canadian said he was only trying to get the money back for the tickets he had bought legitimately as he had lost his friend and didn't want to watch the tennis on his own. (The Telegraph)
Exactly. You can't go to a tennis match by yourself, especially if there's a chance it might not be well-attended. You don't want to scolded, "Quiet, please," by the referee while making sarcastic remarks to strangers. The good news for Gaba is that his troubles didn't hit him in the wallet; he got the "time served" sentence Judge Harold T. Stone used to regularly hand down on Night Court.
District Judge Ken Grant accepted that Gaba had bought the tickets legitimately online and only sold them at face value because he had been separated from a friend and didn't want to go to the match alone.
He told Gaba that touting the tickets would normally carry a 'severe' penalty, but waived a £300 fine because of the two nights he had already spent in custody.
London 2012 organizers are promising to release more tickets for sale to the general public in reaction to the backlash to frequent sight empty seats. Many of those are held by various sports federations; the difference between London and Beijing is the current host cannot bus in spectators to fill the house. It's often an issue at the Games and as former Canadian Olympian Jennifer Heil pointed out, it's a positive the public in London did not stand for it.
Jackie Brock-Doyle, a spokesman for Locog, said: "We will carry on doing that session by session, talking to the accredited groups and asking if we can release some of their tickets."
... Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, said: "This is a negotiation; we don't have the right to demand [the sporting federations] deliver them back."
Mr. Hunt said that he was considering introducing a 30-minute rule so that if seats were not filled within half an hour of the start of a competition the ticket could be resold. A Wimbledon-style system of reselling tickets if people leave early has also been introduced. (The Telegraph)
Meantime, there's a Canadian with a story to tell when he gets back home, although it's probably not too funny at the moment.
Neate Sager is a writer for Yahoo! Canada Sports. Contact him at neatesager@yahoo.ca and follow him on Twitter @neatebuzzthenet.
