Officials Finally Get the Ticket : Attendance: After meeting with USOC, organizers say crowd figures will be made available starting today.

After meeting Monday afternoon with officials from the U.S. Olympic Committee, Olympic Festival Director Elizabeth Primrose-Smith said the problem with incomplete information about attendance at Festival events is resolved, apparently putting to rest the event’s first mini-controversy.

Because Festival officials were at first unable to provide accurate figures for either attendance or tickets sold, it has been difficult to gauge the impact of the first three days of this nine-day, multi-sport event. The absence of attendance figures has been of particular interest because ticket sales are crucial to the financial health of this Festival.

Attendance at some events has been, by the USOC’s definition, disappointing, but Primrose-Smith said as finals in some events take place later in the week, fans will arrive.

The matter was settled to the satisfaction of the USOC, which on Sunday voiced its concern about the problem. Primrose-Smith met at Festival offices downtown with Shelia Walker, the USOC’s Director of Olympic Festivals and Competitions, and emerged with a plan that takes effect today.

“We will make (attendance figures) available every morning by 9 a.m. for the previous day’s attendance,” she said. “The numbers will reflect a variety of things; they will reflect the people who are in the venues--and that will be made up of paid ticket sales, walk-up ticket sales, VIP passes, press, etc. Just what is traditionally counted.

“(Some) ticket sales, because of all the auditing and the various sources, will not come until much later in the Festival and perhaps after. That, too is traditional.”

After solving the ticket troubles, the USOC praised the Festival’s organizational skills. Bob Condron, the USOC press officer who set up the event’s venues, called the Festival’s operations staff “the best we’ve ever seen. Everything we’ve asked for has been there. It’s great.”

Walker echoed that sentiment.

“I agree completely,” she said Monday. “This is our best operations staff. The venues are all running smoothly. The main thing is, ‘How are the athletes enjoying this event?’ They love it.”

After the meeting, which covered not only the ticket situation but a wide variety of topics, Walker said the Festival was running smoothly.

The question of how many Festival tickets have been sold has been lingering for months. Attempts to ascertain advance-sales figures have been met with the response that TicketMaster had the numbers and the Festival did not.

However, executives at TicketMaster reacted angrily to the assertion that they have been withholding information.

Jerry Seltzer, executive vice president of TicketMaster, said Festival officials should have had the numbers all along.

“I am not going to respond to anything they have said,” Seltzer said Monday from the company’s corporate headquarters in Los Angeles.

“What I will say is this: Most major professional (sports), baseball, basketball, every sports team throughout the country, not just in L.A., have the capability to press a button on a computer and find out absolutely accurate up-to-the minute information regarding ticketsales.

“They have the capability to find this literally as it occurs. It is automatically recorded in the system where the ticket was bought, what time, at what ticket outlet, etc.

“Anyone who is connected to the system and who has the receiving capacity, also has the capacity to know to the second--not to the minute or the hour, but the second--all ticketing information, including tickets sold.

“The Olympic Festival has these terminals.”

Primrose-Smith acknowledged that Monday, but said tickets sold through TicketMaster reflected only a portion of tickets sold for each event.

“That’s only one source of about three different sources,” she said. “To release that figure would be so inaccurate that it would not even be worth releasing.”

She said that ticket sales was one of two factors by which she would measure the success of the Festival. The other factor was the satisfaction of the athletes.

Primrose-Smith said the Festival needs to realize $3.5 million in ticket sales in order to break even.