Ticketnews.com
reports that controversial ticket reseller EuroTeam faces bankruptcy after selling "unauthorized"
tickets for the recent London 2012 Olympic Games. The Oslo based company originally
sold 20,000 tickets for the Olympic games via the internet, using 12 different
websites including [londonsummergames.org] and [euroteamtickets.com]. Only
5,000 of the purchased tickets were actually delivered to buyers according to
the European Consumer Centre in Norway. EuroTeam is under current investigation
by Britain's Office of Fair Trading (OFT) as well as the International Olympic
Committee (IOC) and Police in Norway seized 455 of the tickets sold by EuroTeam
- and investigators have alleged that many were illegally obtained by
EuroTeam from the National Olympic Committees of two unidentified Eastern European
countries. Euroteam's owner, Atle Barlaup, called Olympic officials a
"mafia" who used "all their resources to protect their own
economic interests." According to the Euroteam website, the actions of the
IOC and the London Olympics were "done solely to harm a legally operating
company in the interest of protecting the financial interest of the private
organization IOC" dispute a finding in the High Court in London that
the EuroTeam website misled consumers. Whilst refunds have been promised to
customers who did not receive tickets, Tickernews.com says that the
company doesn't seem to have much hope of staying afloat.
Section
31 of the London Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Act, passed in 2006, made
it a criminal offence to sell tickets without authorisation from the London
Organising Committee (Locog) in the UK although once physical tickets became available holders could sell them for face
value to friends and families. The National Olympic Committee (NOC)
of each participating country also received an allocation of tickets and in
some countries there were authorised resellers are legitimately selling
these tickets online. But EuroTeam was not seemingly one of them. Locog
had warned UK fans to beware of bogus and unauthorised websites when searching
for tickets from overseas sources.
And more on EuroTeam from Festival Republic here http://festivalrepublic.com/news/general/beware_of_euroteamnet_scam
saying “The same site is now offering tickets for
Reading and Leeds Festivals. They are NOT an authorised seller and we have
issued NO ticket allocation to them or their affiliated sites”