Issue No.589
Sports
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6 - 12 June 2002 Issue No.589 Sports |
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'Tickets, tickets'
How one man in Japan sells them and how much he gets for them
Tickets. Anybody need tickets?" That familiar refrain, heard before most big sporting events around the world, is making the rounds in Japan for the 2002 World Cup finals.
Aaron Bulkley, a 37-year-old ticket reseller originally from Poughkeepsie, New York, made the long trip to Japan's east coast to scalp tickets for Sunday's soldout match between Argentina and Nigeria. And he rarely lets a deal slip away.
When two English-speaking customers step up to ask for prices, Bulkley starts at 30,000 yen ($242) each. The couple, 19-year-old Titan Sun and 21- year-old Miho Nikai, hesitate.
After a little more bargaining, Sun and Nikai decide they are not going to get a better price and begin to walk away.
"What's it going to take? I want to make a deal with you right now," Bulkley says.
"Thirty thousand for both," Sun answers.
"Let's do it."
That may have been less that Bulkley wanted -- the face value on the tickets was $100 each -- but with 91 tickets for the match and about 30 sold less than three hours before the start, prices fluctuate quickly.
"I want 30,000 per ticket, but you have to take what you get," says Bulkley, who would not say where he got the tickets.
That deal went off without any trouble from the tight security but it is not always so easy.
"It's not against the law to sell tickets but you have to respect the culture," Bulkley says. "They don't understand in this culture. They call it the black market."
When four officers in plain clothes approach Bulkley with their arms crossed -- local sign language for stop -- Bulkley just puts his tickets in his pocket and says he is not doing anything.
After a few moments, the language barrier frustrates the police enough to make them walk away.
That same language difference does not seem to matter when Bulkley gets a Japanese customer with less than rudimentary English. "You get a calculator out and throw in the numbers," Bulkley demonstrates, typing in 30,000 on his small calculator. "We're resourceful. Whatever you can do to get the deal done."
The "we" Bulkley refers to is his six helpers from the Austin, Texas-based Ticket City. Scattered around Japan -- because most of the matches in South Korea have not been sold out -- the group keeps its headquarters in Tokyo and heads out daily for matches.
And with success.
"I sold six," says Bulkley's assistant, who declined to give his name.
Six down, but many more to go for Bulkley, who says he may head straight to Saitama to start selling tickets for the England-Sweden match.
"I was in Niigata yesterday (for Ireland-Cameroon), but it was slow. We sold about 20 tickets. But we didn't have many left. We were very fortunate."
In more ways than one, it seems. Japanese police arrested a Northern Irish jeweller on Saturday for allegedly hawking a World Cup ticket outside the Ireland-Cameroon game in the seaside city of Niigata.
Police caught John Jones, a 43-year- old British citizen, as he was trying to sell a ticket for 20,000 yen ($160) outside Niigata Stadium before the afternoon match, Japan's National Police Agency said in a statement.
Bulkley, who travelled to Salt Lake City and Sydney, Australia, for the past two Olympics, says there are tickets for every game at the World Cup.
"The Japanese don't know that. They hear it's sold out and they stay home."
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