Olympic Sized Line

On Friday the final (legal) chance to buy Olympic tickets came and went, but if you lacked the intestinal fortitude to brave the lines I wouldn’t blame you. Tickets went on sale at 9AM at many venues around the city but there were voracious Olympic fans waiting in line as early as Wednesday night. Phase Four made 250,000 tickets available for events in the capital and one of the venues happens to be five minutes from my house.

I was a little curious so I stopped by the Worker’s Stadium on Friday morning around 10AM to gauge my chances to swoop in and grab some soccer tickets. I had my eyes set on a couple of matches featuring the USA and Argentina, but I didn’t really expect anything to come of it. I figured even if there was no chance to get tickets it would be a case of ‘no harm, no foul’ (sorry… that’s just horrible… ). However, when I got there I saw a scene that would put Apple’s iphone launch to shame.

As you can see from the video the line stretched all the way up to Gongtibeilu (North Street Of Worker’s Stadium), which is several hundred meters away from the East Gate, where the que began. This was rather intimidating. There was no indication of how long a wait there was or if there were any tickets left (or more importantly, if there would be tickets available once I got to the front of the line). This lack of information was disconcerting so I decided to take matters into my own hands.

I did a little math in my head and decided it wasn’t worth my time waiting in line. 250,000 available tickets divided by 2 (2 tickets per person), divided by the 23 venues selling tickets comes to roughly 5,500 people being able to get tickets at any particular venue. There was a good chance that if I wasted most of my day waiting in line I probably would only be able to get tickets for women’s soccer, which although interesting, reminds me too much of a sorority house to take seriously.

I saw a couple of foreigners in line but the vast majority of people looked to be native Beijingers, judging by their squatting techniques and shameless pajama wearing. Instead of waiting in line in 35°C heat for tickets I calculated to be undesirable, I decided to find a better use of my time, i.e. lamenting my nearly utter lack of Olympic Tickets… and enjoying another beautiful Beijing day:

At least we know one thing for sure: those queuing days seem to be working.

Update (07/28/08)

This has been pretty widely covered and it sounds like I only scratched the surface. Here is a pretty comprehensive list of links to give you the bigger picture.

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