Vancouver Olympics halting scalping?

In an unusual dispute, organizers of the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics are planning to stop a separate Canadian Olympic committee from providing tickets to the Vancouver Games to ticket brokers.

According to Reuters, the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) will not disclose which group they plan to confront over the issue, but VANOC has conducted research and uncovered a plan for the group to provide ticket brokers with tickets.

Organizers for the Vancouver Games have already made it clear that tickets reserved for Olympic officials cannot be resold, and they are aiming to clamp down on all ticket reselling for the event. Tickets.com is the official primary seller of tickets for the Vancouver Games, and the organizers have imposed limits on how many tickets can be purchased by the public later this year.

"If [the national group] can't convince us the [alleged scheme we uncovered] is wrong, they won't be getting tickets," David Cobb, Executive Vice-President of VANOC, told Reuters. Tickets will go on sale to the public in early October; the Vancouver Games are scheduled to begin in February 2010.

Olympics tickets are traditionally hot-selling items since the summer and winter games are only held every four years. Countries spend millions vying for the honor to host the games, and then once a country is selected, officials spend millions more readying the facilities to host them.

But policing ticket reselling for the Olympics is a mammoth undertaking because so many different international groups, organizations and sponsors have access to tickets.