Did you apply for Commonwealth Games tickets?
The odds looked promising. 2.3 million applications for one million tickets. In horse racing terms, you'd have to think you'd be a strong favourite to get tickets for at least some of your selected events.
However, I never win anything. You've probably met someone like me at the checkout in a supermarket. Always bemoaning our fate. There are lots of us. As the saying goes, you never meet a poor bookie - or a broke lottery operator. But some of us are unluckier than the rest. Forget Lotto or the football pools. I've never even come up trumps in the half-time raffles at football matches attended by a few dozen spectators.
As you can imagine, I applied for Commonwealth Games tickets with a good deal of trepidation. I desperately want to be part of Glasgow 2014 but my track record is not at all promising. Still, those odds did raise my hopes.
Athletics was my priority. If for nothing else, I want to see Hampden with a running track laid on top of it. I realised of course that athletics would top everyone's list. So I carefully chose the most mundane morning session I could find. All qualifying heats, no medals at stake. I'm a sensible punter. I didn't want to push my miserable quota of luck. With 40,000-odd tickets available for the most boring bit of track-and-field, surely I'd get my requested two?
Did I heck! I had no luck with swimming either even though I'd used the same strategy - the dullest session of the Games. All the cycling tickets had gone too. As I told you, I never win anything.
When the second stage of ticket allocation came around, I was faced with a list of possibilities which, to be honest, didn't greatly excite me. Lacking any sort of eye-hand co-ordination myself, I've never liked table tennis, badminton or squash. Wrestling and weightlifting: all muscles and power. Not of interest to a weakling like me.
Eventually, I chose three events. Hockey - that's football with sticks, isn't it? Lawn bowls - I used to think it was only for the old dears but, now I'm an old dear myself, I should attend in solidarity. And badminton because all that was left were bat-and-ball games. To be honest, I'm not greatly enthusiastic about a sport where the players move faster than the ball. OK - shuttlecock, but that's a daft name as well, isn't it?
Overall though, the ticket sales have been a great success - almost 95% snapped up. I just hope they've gone to ordinary fans: you know, tailors, bakers and candlestick makers. As well as being a bad loser, I also go in for conspiracy theories. Well, so would anyone who's been to a 'sellout' game at Hampden. All those empty seats in the VIP section. Even the ones that are occupied up to half-time remain frustratingly empty ten minutes after the restart. That corporate hospitality is just so time-consuming.
So it's with a jaundiced eye I read that 8% of the 2014 tickets will go to sponsors, 7% to broadcast partners and 1% to Games partners. Does that mean that, at the very mundane morning session of athletics I wanted to see, over 6,500 tickets will be reserved for sponsors and partners? If my Hampden experiences are anything to go by, that probably means 3,000 empty seats and 3,500 clients who have trouble re-finding their places after a hospitality glass or three.
To prevent this old sour-puss pickling in his own bitterness, I'd dearly welcome reassurance from all the ordinary fans out there who got the tickets they wanted. Write in and tell me what you'll be going to see.
Putting my own lack of success to one side - did I tell you I never win anything? - the organisation of the ticket sales has been admirable. Glasgow has avoided the farcical distribution of the London Olympics, the website is informative and the application process simple. Prices too are cheap by international standards with a very generous concessions policy. Well done, Glasgow. A great start - just the ticket.
Now, I see that another 2% of tickets are reserved for 'contingencies'.
Do you think I count as a 'contingency, by any chance? If that doesn't work, it's off to the library to get out the rule books for my chosen events. By next year, I promise, I'll be so into the spirit of the Games that I'll even be cheering on the badminton.
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