VANCOUVER – People snapping up Olympic tickets and reselling them at several times their face value is an issue being closely watched by international Olympic officials, the head of the marketing commission said Tuesday.

Resellers of tickets to the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing are already in business, with opening ceremony tickets going for thousands of dollars above their face value. Last week, two online ticket resellers were offering tickets to the opening and closing ceremonies for the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, despite the tickets not yet being available to the general public.

“It is very difficult to stop it,” Gerhard Heiberg, the head of the International Olympic Committee’s marketing commission said after a speech to the Richmond Chamber of Commerce.

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