It’s been seven months since the very first pubic sales on web site of CoSport, which commenced in July last year. As you can see from my previous blog entries, a lot things have happened since then … There were countless additional ticket drops and abrupt announcements of official public confused me several times in the past. And this time again, I received e-mail from CoSport on February 4th, three weeks after third official public sales:
I received this email on Tuesday night, and tickets goes on sale on Thursday morning which is just one and a half days after the notice. I’m getting used to it, but schedule feels so busy.
Looking back schedules of public sales happened so far,
- 1st public sales： July
- 2nd public sales：October
- 3rd public sales： January
- 4th public sales： February （We are here）
The interval of 3 months was reduced to 1 month, no, 3 weeks!
As always, CoSport has started to announce about the public sales on their web site:
「New Olympic Ticket Sales Start : United States – Thursday 1pm EST」
It is at 10 am on west coast where I live.
I hope I can get first day of men’s golf or/and Softball preliminary round to be held in my hometown Fukushima.
Conflict with my house move
Coincidentally, my family was scheduled to move to a new house on February 6th, the day the ticket was going on sale.
Although it is only a few kilometers away from my apartment to the new house, inevitably the entire family becomes super busy with preparing and executing the move. Whenever you move, you make same mistakes no matter how many times you have done before. Next move comes to you when you forgot how you dealt with it.
Moreover, I felt it is almost impossible to join the ticket sales scheduled at 10 o’clock because the moving company was scheduled to ring a bell of my apartment room at 10:30.
Ticket sales & moving day has come
On February 6th, when moving and ticket sales happen, I was busy working on packing my stuff, trying not to forget about ticket sales.
When packing was pretty much done, I grabbed multiple mobile phones and set up WI-FI environment.
Then, the countdown started 30 minutes earlier than 10 am when the ticket sales was scheduled.
I was like what does “5:15 pm” mean? Aside from that, I’m excited as usual and keep waiting for the sales time. Needless to say, I had already logged in to the CoSport site so that I would not need to be in a hurry when purchasing.
Public sales started!
It was 10am sharp.
The browser screens of my three mobile phones were switched to this screen all at once.
Ahhhh, even the smallest number is 4000s!
The rest of the devices are in the 6000’s and 10,000’s, which is quite desperate.
I could get nothing from 10,000s, so I left the line and started over.
Then I got 12,000s.
It means 12,000 devices are in the queue. Many people like me are accessing from multiple devices at the same time, so even if you underestimate, there would be about 5000 to 6000 people in the line. But I’m not sure if this is a large number of not.
From my experience so far, I sort of know that the 4000s will be tough. There may be almost no tickets left by the time my turn comes.
Then the page shows “It’s Your Turn” and when it was my turn…
I got a phone call from the moving company saying “I just arrived. There is no parking lot, but what should I do?”
“Hold on a minute. I’m coming now.”
I hang up the phone, and I knew it’s not a good idea but I spent a few minutes moment to browser what tickets are left:
Golf, softball, baseball, canoe, badminton, judo, equestrian, fencing, gymnastics, hockey, rugby, table tennis, etc.
However, the softball preliminary games at Fukushima venue is not on sale and golf tickets for men’s first day are not on sale either.
Then, sports climbing, where I did not have any interest at all until recently, was intriguing! Because the number of competition days is limited and the venue is not large, the amount of tickets should not be large. That makes us relatively difficult to get tickets. At the end of last year, I got interested in the sports climbing when I was watching competitions on TV in Japan. The rules seem relatively easy to understand and Japanese athletes will appear for every single day. But unfortunately I already have conflicting tickets for a different sport scheduled for on the night of August 6th when the tickets were issued.
I want to see Judo too, but … Although it seems that the schedule is manageable, I am pretty sure that I will get bored about watching matches other than Japanese athletes that everyone will be there for. The same goes for badminton . At this point, I would like to see a sport that I’m interested in personally, no matter who plays.
Speaking of interest, I found tickets for 100-meter men’s final that will call everyone’s attention all over the world .
Personally, I have to skip because of the same reason … I’m not so interested in watching other competitions or other players. And the ticket price is over $1,000. I’ve already spent a lot of money with high-priced baseball, soccer, and wrestling tickets. I don’t think I can afford buying $1,000 tickets. In fact, this tickets were unsold for a while.
Going back to work
I decided to move on without buying tickets.
The first house move in the United States using a moving company was a different experience than in Japan. Moving company in Japan is like an army. They are well dressed in cooperate uniform, and work like a slave. On the other hand, here in the United States, casually dressed two young dudes come with a truck. After guiding them to a parking space, having a small talk and discussion about what to do, the two young men started to wrap furniture and carry it out.
They do not let me touch the furniture and I got nothing to do. So I began to check the Olympic tickets again at CoSport.
But there weren’t any competitions or events that were of interest anymore …
My ticket purchase history
The house moving work finished in 3 hours including unpacking.
The fourth public sales of Olympic Games tickets went on almost at the same time.
This time, I got zero tickets.
| JUN | Lottery sale | None | 0 |
| JUL | Live sale | Equestrian | 1 |
| Extra live sale | Basketball, 3on3, Handball (x2), Hockey, Weight lifting | 6 | |
| Extra extra live sale | Golf (x4), Weightlifting | 5 | |
| OCT | 2nd live sale | None | 0 |
| Extra live sale | Golf, Volleyball (x2), Handball, Wrestling | 5 | |
| NOV | Extra extra live sale | Water polo, Soccer | 2 |
| Extra live sale again | Did not purchase | 0 | |
| Extra live sale continues | Soccer | 1 | |
| DEC | Extra sale – End of year | Artistic Swimming | 1 |
| JAN | Extra sale – New year | Golf (x2) | 2 |
| 3rd live sale | Baseball | 1 | |
| FEB | 4th live sale | Did not purchase | 0 |
Since I moved, I emailed CoSport to ask where purchased tickets would be mailed, but I have not had any reply from them for last few weeks. I kind of know the answer. I am just too lazy to carefully read frequently asked questions on CoSport web site.
I’ve been claiming this many times, but if I can get tickets for men’s golf first round and women’s softball in Fukushima, I will be done!
