Over the weekend, while enjoying some rare time at home in Toronto (I write from a hotel in the suburbs of Chicago), my girlfriend and I biked across the city along the water front from the Roncesvalles neighborhood to our home in Leslieville. Along the way we encountered the barricaded Lakeshore Boulevard. Barricaded to keep cars out, though many on bikes navigated the barrier to enjoy a rare ride on one of the city’s busiest roads. It was here where we encountered the Pan Am Games for the first time. We cycled past Ontario Place and overhead an announcer on a loud speaker explaining the Triathalon course. We both thought it would be great to see something while the games were on, what exactly we didn’t know. We wanted to participate in the games with no specific event in mind.

Then we hit a different barrier. I recalled the 3 or so failed attempts to buy tickets over the past couple of weeks and soon after recalled the public shaming Torontonians received from our very own mayor over our lack of perceived enthusiasm for the games (which had yet to begin at the time). This shaming was referenced in a New York Times article professing that the games had landed in Toronto with a ‘thud’:

“I think the only sport that we’re not playing in the Pan-Am Games is sort of moaning and groaning,” Mr. Tory told the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation on Monday. “And Toronto, on a regular basis, would be qualifying for a gold medal in that.”

Article after article was about our collective disinterest, supported by a common metric: only 800,000 of a possible 1.4 million tickets had been sold. The irony of the Toronto Star article was that Tory himself hadn’t bought his tickets, yet. However, if my experience is any indication, it may be that Torontonians are interested, they’re just having a hard time finding tickets when the spirit of the games hits them. Even when riding through a venue.

Let me show you what I mean.

1 — The schedule has no links to tickets

2 — When you do find the ticket site it offers no ability to filter by day, time, price or proximity.

3 — When you do find an event you’re interested in, it is nearly impossible to know if there are any tickets left without having to do a series of stab in the dark searches, each interrupted by a reCaptcha.

I have tried, repeatedly, to buy tickets. I even tried to take advantage of the CIBC 25% discount on Canada Day, but the prices did not immediately reflect discount, and I could not find the code anywhere (just give it to me, don’t make me work for it).

Because I’ve tried to find tickets so often, I now get all ads telling me I can get tickets starting at $20. And when I follow those ads, I inevitably have to repeat each of the above steps in search of this mythical $20 ticket. Is it really so hard to simply show me what is actually available on a specific day so I might attend something when I return home this weekend?

In one of the Toronto Star articles (I cannot seem to find it again) the writer describes how many of the events are esoteric and thus difficult draws in an attempt to explain Toronto’s perceived apathy. I would argue that if the ticket buying process allowed those dipping their toes into the Pan Am Games to find something, anything with a little more ease, you might have more people excited to spontaneously drop in on some Roller Figure Skating. Not knowing what an event is should not be seen as a barrier to attending, or caring about the games. If ticketmaster.ca and the Pan Am Games actually cared at about getting people out to the events they would have seen this gap in knowledge as an opportunity to design the schedule and ticketing process, not as the final transaction for those in the know, but as the entry point to games that it ultimately is. Allow Torontonians to discover the games, not block access at every query.

Maybe, Mayor Tory, the narrative around these games would be very different if the most cited measure of interest were not so heavily distorted by my, and likely many other’s, inability to find any of the remaining 600,000 tickets. Ticket sales is a facile proxy to interest, but only when it works. Don’t shame us Torontonians. Shame on you for shaming your citizens and not the vendors and organizers responsible for getting people to the games.