High demand Michelle Obama visit to Vancouver has exclusive audience

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VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – There’s little hope members of the public will be able to attend former US First Lady Michelle Obama‘s event in Vancouver next month after tickets sold out.

Only Greater Vancouver Board of Trade members currently have access to the February 15th event at Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

GVBoT CEO Iain Black says it’s not possible to move to a bigger space.

“The Queen Elizabeth Theatre is unfortunately the largest venue that was available to us on the day we were able to secure Mrs. Obama for that particular date,” he says.

Black admits no other event has sold out so fast.

“We’ve never seen anything like this before, uh, we’ve dealt with luminaries and national/international leaders before, but the demand for tickets for Mrs. Obama was simply unprecedented.”

Longtime ticket broker Kingsley Bailey says nearly 3,000 available seats were snapped up within 10 minutes, and each person was also limited to only two per buyer.

“You’ve got to be a member to get in –any chance to get in,” he says. “What the Board of Trade does, they get some speakers that are really –everybody really wants to hear them talk and this is a good way for the Board of Trade to get new members because people will want to be members of the Board of Trade to be able to get opportunities like this.”

Bailey, who says he has tickets because he’s a member of the board, says the same thing happened when former US President Bill Clinton came to Vancouver.

“I don’t really think they thought that the numbers would be as good and as high as they were so quickly for Michelle Obama. If people are thinking about, you know, for the future events, I’d definitely say be a Board of Trade member.”

With Obama’s appearance so high in demand, Bailey doesn’t think anyone with tickets will try to re-sell them.

“Everybody that has tickets are going. What’ll happen and always does happen is there’s going to be you know maybe a quarter of a percentage point of people that can not make it and they’ll come available. This is definitely where to be to listen to this wonderful lady speak.”

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