Category: OLYMPICS TICKETS

On March 24, 2020, IOC President and Prime Minister Abe agreed on postponement of the Tokyo Olympics.

At this point I don’t know exactly when it will be postponed. They only said the event will be held “by” the summer of 2021. For now I personally look for answers to these three questions:

1. Where do my purchased tickets go?
2. How do I deal with my booked flight tickets?
3. Can I really go to Japan for the Olympics?

My Tickets

So far I have purchased Olympics tickets for 25 sessions of 13 events of 11 competitions.

I already spent more than a few thousand bucks, so that it would be most painful scenario that I lose all tickets without any refund.

I checked the Terms and Conditions that we need to agree to in CoSport ticket purchase process:

“Tickets for Events that have been rescheduled or postponed are valid for the Event with the same Session code at the rescheduled day and/or time“

It sounds like the tickets we have purchased will remain valid without being canceled or released .

CoSport sent an email to ticket holders on the day after the postponement announcement.

“CoSport Tokyo 2020 purchases will be honored at the Games in 2021‘

I need to figure out what “Will be honored” exactly mean, but it seems unlikely that the tickets we bought will be canceled.

Competition Schedule

Competition schedule may change within the two week range of the event. I may end up with having unexpected conflicts of sessions. I’m still not sure if it’s possible to cancel or change.

The schedule change may get rid of conflicts. In my case, baseball final and men’s soccer final are conflicting. The same goes to basketball preliminary and weightlifting. I hope I won’t need to give up on some of the tickets I already have.

Flight Tickets

This is what I care most about. I have purchased non-refundable round-trip air tickets between Seattle and Tokyo for my family, so I have no choice but to cancel and re-book ones to accommodate with the date changes.

Checking website of the airline company, the status looks quite interesting due to travel restrictions because of the current Covid-19 situation:

What is the “Subject to government approval“? 🙂

In any case, I won’t be able to take any action until the IOC announces a new competition schedule, given the current situation of the Covid-19.

Can I really go to Japan?

“Can my family really go to Japan next year?” The answer would be different depending on whether the event is postponed to spring or summer.

• If postponed to spring of 2021

There’s a rumor where the Olympics get postponed to next spring. It’s one of the best seasons in Tokyo from weather perspective. However, because kids still have schools to go to in the United States, we have a risk that kids may not be accompanied. Adults are also drawn to it. Inevitably, that makes us difficult to travel to Japan. Kids in the States have one week spring break in first half of April, so I have a slight expectation that I’ll have to tie it up, but that’s not enough.

But, is it realistic to postpone the entire event to Spring?

That is when Basketball NBA is at a full swing. They won’t be able to form the America dream team.

Boxing will be difficult to rent at the Kokugikan hall if it coincides with Grand Sumo competition in May.

Golf has the Masters tournament in early April and PGA Championship in May. If they conflict with the Olympics, top players will not prioritize the event.

• If postponed to summer of 2021

In the United States, when you say “executing by“, it means “executing in” at least in my company. In other words, “held by summer” is usually taken as “held in summer,” and it is often what happens.

Kids summer vacation starts in late June, so it’s best to move the dates to summer.

However, it’s super hot and humid in summer in Tokyo. It’s when you get a lot of mosquitoes to bite. I haven’t seen any mosquitoes or cockroaches for the last few years as Seattle does not have them. I will be super depressed just because I have to deal with mosquitoes that I hate the most in the world.

I wish I could go to Tokyo in a kid-friendly season when there are no mosquitoes, but I know this is the “summer” Olympic games…

What if the Olympics gets canceled?

Possibly, except for the case where the Covid-19 situation lasts longer than expected and next year’s events are also jeopardized, the “Olympic cancellation” scenario will unlikely happen, but I originally started to work on this entry based on the assumption/rumor that the Olympics will be canceled.

So what if the Olympic Games get canceled due to Covid-19?

According to CoSport and the Tokyo Olympic and Paralympic Games Organizing Committee (… long! TOCOG for short), honestly, I didn’t quite get what would happen to my tickets.

I revisited the Terms & Conditions, which was asked to read and give consent when purchasing tickets on CoSport website,

“If an event (= Tokyo Olympics) is canceled, the (ticket) purchaser may apply for a refund to THE COMPANY (= CoSport) under the parameters outlined in the TOCOG Terms and Conditions.“

Then I read the TOCOG Terms and Conditions:

“If our corporation (= TOCOG) fails to fulfill the obligations set forth in the Tokyo 2020 Ticket Rules, and if the cause is force majeure, we will not be liable for the failure.“

Therefore, there will be no refund if the Olympic cancellation caused by Covid-19 is considered as “force majeure”, meaning that neither TOCOG nor CoSport is liable.

I am just crossing my fingers not to get the Olympics to be canceled.

New tickets were sporadically added after the 4th official first-come-first-served public sales started in early February, but the biggest ticket drop after the general release in July last year has occurred on Friday, March 6th!

On website of CoSport, the Authorized Ticket Reseller in the United States, there are still a lot of tickets left even after filtering by “Exclude Sold Out”!

Badminton, baseball, softball, judo, rugby, table tennis, etc.

Surprisingly tickets were available for Decathlon competitions and Taekwondo, which had been pretty competitive to find tickets.

What surprised me the most is not just the large number of competitions, but also the fact that tickets are on sale for many sports that are not so often listed up on the page.

For example, I have probably never seen badminton women’s singles on sale before. Doubles final is for sale as well.

And most sessions for Judo finals are on sale!

Tickets are naturally expensive for sessions where Japanese players are expected to compete for medals. Moreover, grade A seats are only available. Each badminton and judo match costs as much as $500~$600! I am not so interested in the competitions that I feel it is too expensive.

So I do not buy any of them.

From schedule wise, I probably could make Badminton though.

And here comes Basketball Men’s final!

From the Tickets Site Tracker, which sends an alert email automatically when new tickets are added to the CoSport website, I received the above notification, but by the time I actually access the site, tickets are already sold out. . Probably the number of sales is very limited, and there are so many people who want the tickets.

The men’s basketball final has much higher demand than 100M final, even considering the fact the venue is much smaller. The NBA US Dream Team is at closest position to gold medal this time as well. If you really want to see a Dream Team’s game, you would buy tickets for final match. You will never know when the Dream Team plays in qualifying round where the match-up schedule is not clear yet.

Golf!

What I wanted for last half year are tickets for first day of men’s golf, which is still a big missing piece for me.

And finally!

Not only for the day 1, tickets are available for all days except first round of Women’s. Given my struggle for last several months, I had a bit mixed feeling, but I just go and get ones!

Now I have purchased tickets for all four days for men’s golf and all four days for women’s golf! It was July 24th last year when I first got a ticket for men and women, so it took more than half a year to complete purchase for the 8 sessions …

A little problem of golf competition is, however, it takes each player about 4 hours to complete his/her individual round of play, and for each day it takes more than 8 hours from the start to the end of competition. Considering round-trip time to and from the golf course, it is a bit annoying that I can not add other competitions during the day.

The outdoor summer heat will be excessive, and there are probably 25,000 spectators to attend the event each day, so I will be unlikely able to closely watch popular golfers playing. Spectators’ back heads will be only in my sight when last group has reached the green of 18th hole on the final day.

Do I still wanna go? Well, yes I gotta go.

My to date

Tickets for many popular sessions were for sale, but I only purchased ones for Men’s golf day 1:

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
MAR	Covid-19ish live sale	Golf	1

I got tickets for 11 sessions , 13 events and 25 sessions !

Ticket prices are relatively high for popular sessions where Japanese players are likely to win medals, and my schedule is already tight. But I would like to continue to look for tickets of softball qualifying sessions to happen in my hometown Fukushima. The problem is, from what I’ve received from the Tickets Site Tracker alert so far, it seems that the tickets were never on sale in the United States. Therefore, possibly tickets are only available to people in Japan or just to people affected by Tsunami and nuclear disaster? My guess would be probably right.

Anyways, a large amount of tickets got dropped at this timing.

I wonder why it happened on March 6 when the Covid-19 started to explode in the United States, and in fact a lot of tickets are still unsold even after two days.

Being a bit optimistic here, the reason would be most of the unsold tickets are expensive because they are for category category A seats, and it has already been more than half a year since the general sale started, and probably tickets seekers have already bought all they wanted. That would be why people are no longer acting quickly.

Being a bit pessimistic, I hope we will not put ourselves into a situation where we will wait for a while while staying in Tokyo due to the fear of virus infection and the risk of postponement / discontinuation of the Olympic Games.

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!

When I saw controversial articles saying “500,000 Olympics tickets still left after second lottery sales ” here and there in Japan’s online media, I received an e-mail from United States Olympic Authorized Ticket Reseller, CoSport.

“New Tickets and Packages on Sale Thursday, January 16 at 3pm EST”

The email also mentions that they have received newly-allocated tickets from the Tokyo 2020 Organizing Committee” but the timing is perfectly matching with the announcement regarding the unsold tickets made by the Organizing Committee. I don’t know what it indicates 🙂

CoSport sent us the email on the afternoon of January 15, which is less than a day before the public sales starting January 16th. Why are they in such a hurry? There’s a reason behind. Or simply it was because of mis-communication made by the person in charge.

Putting my guess aside, this is the third “official” first-come-first-served sale on CoSport US website:

• 1st public sale： July
• 2nd public sale：October
• 3rd public sale： January（We are here）

Coincidentally or possibly intentionally, it has happened every three months.

I called it “official” because, as I continuously reported multiple times between the public sales, extra tickets went on sale without any announcement. I have greatly benefited from it.

Immediately after receiving this third public sales announcement, I visited CoSport website where I found the announcement of “New Olympic Ticket Sales Start” along with the scheduled start time of sales in each country / region,

All information about unsold tickets have also reset.

Before sales begin

The ticket sales on the next day starts on weekday. I am at work, and I am in meetings all day. 🙁

On the west coast where I live, sales start from 12:00 noon.

From my experiences to date, it is too late to access at 12 o’clock. Preparation is required.

When I visited CoSport website 3 hours before the sales started, there was already a queue!!

Looking at the page closely, I found it says “You are in queue for CoSport’s EU and the Middle East Sale”.

Yeah, it started earlier in other areas where CoSport has a deal. Needless to say, US residents like me cannot buy tickets.

I stand by again at 11:30 which is 30 minutes before sales on the West Coast of the United States.

I have two browsers on my laptop brought in to conference room and one browser on my mobile phone

I log in to CoSport sites on all the browsers. I remeber I wasted time logging in for last two public sales. I don’t want to make a same mistake here.

Ticket sale started on January 16th (Thursday) !

At 11:30 am, I access the CoSport top page on all browsers simultaneously and the sales start countdown begins.

A half hour later, at 12:00 pm, the number of people ahead of me is displayed in each browser.

It is 4,000 on mobile phone, and It’s similar on a browser on my laptop but another browser on the same PC did a good job! The queue started with 400 people . I never had such a small number of users in line ahead of me!

The number dropped down to 200 shortly, and in half a dozen minutes after the start of sales, the message changed to “It is your turn.”

The CoSport top page is displayed automatically and competition listing page becomes accessible.

Tickets for about 17 competitions still left 7-8 minutes after the start of sales.

Notable competions are swimming, badminton, baseball / soft, fencing, golf, shooting, surfing, and table tennis .

First of all, I check golf, but I can only find tickets for women’s that I have already purchased. No luck.

For Swimming, it was the first time for me to find tickets for “Men’s and Women’s Diving”. But schedule is a bit problem. The session is quite short. It is only one hour.

Softball tickets are on sale only for bronze medal game that was available before.I do not buy because the session conflicts with the one I already decided to go.

For badminton and table tennis, I am unlikely able to accommodate my schedule.

Fencing is a no go because Makuhari Messe is to far from my place in Tokyo. 🙁

I’m not so familiar with surfing …

For basketball, tickets are still on sale for women’s final and men’s semi-finals / bronze medal game , but no tickets are available for men’s final. No luck. I also have ones for a preliminary round.

Although it is not shown in the above screenshot, also tennis was also available. It is for men’s singles final and women’s doubles final, which are quite popular sessions including the session below!

Men’s Singles Gold Medal Match …. I tried to add category D tickets to shopping cart, but the page said “already sold out” … I saw a same message before. That’s a bummer.

Moving on to volleyball, I found most of the sessions for sale, and Women’s gold medal match was one of them!

However, when I tried to add tickets to shopping cart, I got an error message saying “Only 1 ticket can be purchased”, so I had to pass.

Am I a bit too picky?

Baseball!

Baseball is my second highest priority sport after golf. As you know, or it may be hard to believe, baseball is the most popular sport to play and watch in Japan.

Until yesterday I had never found even a single ticket for baseball. I thought I was totally out of luck.

But here it comes today!

It’s baseball gold medal game!

I don’t quite understand the only available tickets are for the gold medal match. Where are the ones for preliminary round?! People care more about knockout stage?!

I was a bit nervous when I was adding tickets to my shopping card. Cosport, please don’t say “Already sold out”. I got my fingers crossed, and I made it!. I was able to get there quickly because I already logged in with my account.

Wow, I got tickets for baseball final game! They must be premium tickets for people in Japan.

One problem is the baseball final game is completely conflicting with the one for soccer men’s final. I will find out how to deal with it. I got tickets for the soccer with my account and for the baseball with my kid’s account, respectively, so I believe I can manage the complexity.（I don’t know how yet though）

Ticket purchase history

In this third official public sale on CoSport website, I purchased tickets only for baseball gold medal game this time.

Here is a quick summary and history of Olympics tickets I’ve got so far:

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

  I got tickets for 24 sessions for 13 competitions under 13 sports in total.

I will complete my effort when I have added tickets for first round of men’s golf and softball games to be held in my hometown Fukushima. I am looking forward to additional purchase opportunities.

Here comes the year 2020! It’s been about half a year since the Olympic ticket public sales started in July 2019. As I’ve written many times, extra ticket sales without prior notices occurred for a number of times, and it seems to be continuing into the new year 2020 .

As far as I checked, in the new year time period, I first found US ATR (Authorized Ticket Reseller) CoSport dropped a lot of tickets for the Athletics competitions on January 2nd. It included category B tickets for Men’s 100M final I previously mentioned.

Then 4 days later on Monday January 6th, I saw a number of tickets got dropped for badminton, artistic swimming, archery, basketball, karate, boat, surfing, and volleyball.

For basketball, I found tickets for women’s gold medal game, men’s bronze medal and some others.I did not find ones for men’s gold medal, but I saw tickets on sale for two session of men’s semi-finals so that if I bought both, I could see an America’s dream team’s game at a high chance. Of course, I cannot afford that though. Ticket prices were extremely high, and the schedule is a bit challenging for me as the semi-final games are conflicting with women’s golf and wrestling that I am going to see.

Karate is something we should check out as it is the sport originated in Japan. The problem is that I am not so interested in watching it.

When I last visited my hometown in Fukushima, I heard from my dad that he is interested in going to see badminton games. He had a bit of hesitation because he is so old that he needs someone’s support to travel to/from venue. Unfortunately I find a lot of conflicts with competitions where I have already purchased tickets. I know a lot of people in Japan want to go see badminton, and I wish I could join him because travel to the venue is relatively easy from my place.

Golf, golf, golf!

A surprise ticket sale happened on Thursday January 9, which is shortly after annual 3 week visit in Japan and when I still had a terrible jet-lag and had a bunch of work to do.

I found what I had been waiting for quite a long time when I opened mail box in my mobile app in the morning.

It is an alert email on Men’s golf from the Tickets Site Tracker.

“GLF03” is a session code for men’s golf 3rd round.

I immediately opened CoSport website, and I found tickets being on sale for “GLF04”, which is for men’s golf final round = men’s golf gold medal session!

I did not have much time. I had to prepare for an early morning meeting. I quickly completed purchase of the tickets for men’s golf 3rd and 4th rounds with a rushed head and fingers.

Woo-Hoo!

Now I got 3 days out of 4. I only had tickets for 2nd day, while I got ones for all days for women’s. There were some reasons I almost gave up on more tickets. Tiger Woods who won the Masters last year may be qualified. Hideki Matsuyama, who is from Japan and got second position after Tiger in recent ZOZO Championship, has a chance to win a medal. Men’s golf is much popular than women’s in the United States, etc, etc. (It is opposite in Japan and some Asian countries. Women’s golf has more popularity). I am super happy that now I am qualified to go see 3 rounds of men’s golf! 🙂

It was worth waiting. I did not purchase any other tickets just for this. Because the venue is a bit far and golf is an all-day event, I was concerned about creating conflicts.

Now day 1 is only missing.

As a matter of fact, I did not know that tickets for 1st round were for sale earlier in the morning before I got out of bed. I am looking forward to another chance!

My ticket purchase history

I am so glad that I can add two men’s golf session to my purchase history table here. 🙂

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

In total I have purchased tickets for 23 sessions, and the competition portfolio looks better balanced now.

I still need tickets for men’s golf day 1, softball in Fukushima, and baseball!

In second half of year 2019, I went through a number of ticket sales for the Tokyo Olympics 2020. This page gives a quick summary of what I experienced to buy tickets as a 4 year United States resident originally from Tokyo, Japan.

June 24: Ticket lottery

The first chance to purchase Tokyo 2020 tickets is to join and win ticket lottery scheduled in June 2019. The request phase started and ended in May, and the lottery took place on website of CoSport, who is the Olympics Authorized Ticket Reseller (ATR) in US and some other countries.

I am Japanese, but I am blocked to access Tokyo Olympic Committee official ticket website. It is primarily for people locating in Japan, and people outside Japan, like me, regardless of nationality, needs to use ATR to buy tickets. It is CoSport for me living in the United States.

I created an account for CoSport, and I requested tickets for golf, baseball and softball.

And I lost the lottery.

I could not win even one single ticket for the Olympics. It showed me how competitive it is to get tickets…

Live ticket schedule and broker

Interestingly enough, the following live sales schedule is very different from Japan. Domestic residents in the host country needed to wait at least until Autumn 2019 for public ticket sales to begin. On the other hand, in the United States, it started in July 2019.

CoSport initially announced that the live ticket sales open on July 2nd, and then they postponed the start date by one week.

To me and my family, package tour was not a choice. We have a house to stay during the period of the Olympic games in Tokyo. We need to get individual tickets.

July 9th: First public sales

In the (first) live sales happened on July 9th, I was able to buy tickets for Equestrian. The reason I first picked the competition is that the venue is relatively close to my house in Tokyo. I would not say it is a walking distance but probably it is the closet venue among all.

The website said there were about 2,000 users/devices in line ahead of me. I waited in the queue for 40 minutes or so, and I did not find a lot of tickets left when I finally got to the top page.

After I selected category B tickets for Equestrian, I had to spend another several minutes to add them to shopping card and complete transaction. The CoSport website was so slow that even login to the site took me forever. By the time I finally completed the purchase, no tickets were available for any competitions. All tickets were quickly sold out within an hour, meaning probably only 10,000 people or less were lucky enough to get tickets. How competitive it is to buy Olympics tickets!

Then I realized that CoSport adds a lot of extra charges to the face value of the tickets.

• Currency conversion fee
• Merchant service fee
• Shipping

What the heck are all the extra fees? 🙁 In total I got 43 USD extra $ charge. They already added 20% of face value, then I ended up with paying more that 200 bucks for $140 tickets.

July 19: Extra live sales

I was not super comfortable with how CoSport makes extra money, but my family was super happy about the fact that we were able to secure tickets for the Olympics 2020 which is held in our home country. 🙂

Ten days after the public sales, I happened to visit the CoSport website just to see what is there. I expected nothing. I was just going to check if there is any update and make sure tickets are still sold out.

Then I discovered tickets were NOT sold out. I found tickets being on sale again for some sessions like:

• Basketball preliminary round
• Basketball 3 on 3
• Weightlifting
• Handball
• Hockey, etc

Well, is this fake or what? I do not care. I just selected tickets and proceeded with checkout process, and I made it!

No prior notice was given by CoSport. Did they drop unsold tickets all of a sudden? Wow. It is hard to believe, but it happened. I got a confirmation email and receipt from CoSport, meaning I successfully purchased tickets for all the above 5 competitions!

Is this going to keep happening in the future? How can I deal with it?

Tickets Site Tracker

When I was looking at Twitter, I happened to find this post:

It looks like this guy posts this kind of comment whenever CoSports adds new tickets on their site.

How can he keep track of the ticket sales?

Then I hit the URL os-site-tracker.com to see what is in there.

OK. I did not know that this kind of extra ticket sales also frequently occurred for Rio and London. Even for Tokyo, it has also already happened a few times since the ‘official’ public sales on July 9th.

Holy Cow.

This Tokyo 2020 Ticket Sites Tracker is not a free service. You need to pay 15 USD.

OK. I paid 15 bucks using PayPal.

You can select sessions you want to keep track of. Then you are supposed to get an alert email within 3 minutes after new tickets went on sale. I don’t know yet if it really works as it is supposed to. Let’s see.

(BTW, I do not mean to advertise this service. I am not receiving any money from them. :-))

A few days later, I happened to notice that they pushed a few alerts, and I missed all of them, only because they all fell into spam folder, not in my inbox.

You must be kidding.

I updated spam mail setting immediately.

July 24th: Another extra live sales

Five days later on July 24th, I found this alert email in my inbox.

Under “Change with last update”, you can find latest updates on sessions where you are keeping track of status. All others are newly available tickets for now.

I hit CoSport website and found tickets are available for 3 sessions of women’s golf. Also a few minutes later, I received another alert saying new tickets are available for men’s golf day 2.

I bought all of them, because golf is my top priority sport to watch (and play).

I let my wife know, and she purchased weightlifting women’s 55kg!

Thanks Tickets Site Tracker. We probably could not buy the tickets without you!

(Again, I am not having any affiliate deal with them. I am just thanking them for the great service. ;-))

Oct 10th: Second ‘official’ live sales

It was about two and a half months later when we received an email from CoSport (not from Site Tracker) saying there is another live sales starting in two days.

On October 10th, the day when the first Tokyo Olympics games began 55 years ago, the second publich sales started on CoSport website.

After two hours of battle, unfortunately I was not able to get any ticket.

It started with server error.

I got into endless queue.

And I ended up with being the page where no tickets were left.

It is still super competitive to get even one single ticket for the Olympics, through this officially announced process.

BUT, you can imagine what happens next, right?

Oct 10th: At that night

At the night of the Olympics ticket public sales, I visited CoSport website again, expecting ‘something unexpected’ to happen.

The public sales were ended several hours before, and no tickets were supposed to be available.

BUT, at 10PM, I found new tickets dropped on CoSport page which is no longer empty and shows names of competitions again.

There you go.

I started with checking what is available under golf, and discovered tickets for final round of women’s, which I could not buy in July.

I also checked several other competitions and bought tickets for:

• Women’s handball bronze medal game
• Men’s and Women’s volleyball preliminary rounds
• Women’s wrestling 57kg, and
• Women’s golf final round

The wrestling 57kg is a must-see session where Japanese athlete Risako Kawai is qualified and expected to win a gold. The tickets were super pricey but I simply did not want to miss a chance.

Nov-Dec: Extra live sales

I am not going into details on results of ‘sudden’ live sales happened in Nov and Dec. CoSport dropped new tickets for various competitions from time to time without any prior notice.

For the two months, I purchased tickets for:

• Men’s soccer gold medal game
• Women’s soccer preliminary (in Sendai that is closed to my hometown Fukushima)
• Women’s Water Polo preliminary, and
• Artistic Swimming duet technical routine (scheduled same day as Water Polo)

This continues into year 2020 until the postponement of the event was announced….

My ticket purchase history

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 continues	Soccer	1
DEC	Extra sale – End of year	Artistic Swimming	1