We did buy a few tickets when they had the Olympics in Atlanta but never did go (can't recall if it was some sort of lottery or exactly how tickets were sold). I seem to recall that a couple of weeks prior to the games, they were offering 'restricted viewing' tickets for the opening ceremonies where you might be seated behind a camera platform or some sort of other obstruction...........ummmm no thanks. As I understood it from a few co-workers who did go, unless you have some sort of VIP package for transportation, getting around was a disaster. Assume that would be true in any city where huge numbers of spectators are all planning to show up at the same time. Hotel prices would probably also be exorbitant unless you plan to stay 100 miles away and somehow commute each day.................LOL. ZERO plans to attend in person, will watch on TV instead from home !!!
I remember that. Home Depot was the big sponsor and they had paper applications for tickets available at all US Home Depot locations. I picked one up just out of curiosity. And yeah it was basically a lottery for those tickets where the application had to be mailed in. Then obviously there were sales of tickets during the Olympics since not every event sold out from the initial applications. I don't remember if it required a credit card (Visa obviously) or if they accepted payment by check. OK - looked it up and it was check, money order, or Visa.
Tickets to the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta went on sale yesterday. The
Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games, which has a record inventory of 11 million tickets, planned to release about 36 million brochures containing mail-order forms to the public at outlets across the country.
-- Where to find brochures:
Home Depot stores and selected grocery stores that sell Coca-Cola. -- How to order tickets: For now, tickets are available only by mail order. Payment -- by check, money order or
Visa-- is required at the time of the order. Prices range from $6 (plus tax) for an early-round baseball game to $636 for the opening and closing ceremonies.
I've only been to one Olympics event in my life. It was a men's (only men's at the time) soccer preliminary match between Brazil and West Germany during the 1984 Olympics Tickets were fairly cheap too, although ours were maybe $11 each. I heard some of the cheapest tickets were about $3.50. They were available through our local ticket agency called BASS Tickets. For the men's soccer tournament, the playing sites were dispersed. The main site was the Rose Bowl, with secondary sites at Stanford University (where I saw it), Harvard, and the US Naval Academy. In any case, the atmosphere was great, but the stadium was horrible. There were over 70,000, which was then a record for the most to watch soccer in the United States. And there was a very large continent of Brazilian fans. My dad bought me a program too. After we bought it, my dad actually got some tickets from a friend of his who worked at the local ABC affiliate, back when ABC was broadcasting the Olympics. So we had four tickets in two different parts of the stadium and went with a couple of family friends. But those were on the official ticket stock, which was much nicer. The other thing about the tickets was that they specified who the tickets were issued to, although that didn't matter. It just said "ABC".
There are lots of photos of tickets. This one was apparently unused and for sale on eBay. Must have been issued to the Qatari contingent.
