As Games organizers brace for next weekend's expected online frenzy by buyers hoping to snag scarce remaining tickets to the 2010 Olympics, demand has slowed to a crawl at private agencies hoping to resell admissions to the Games at a profit.

"Olympic business is very slow. It's sporadic, to say the least," Mario Livich, CEO and founder of ShowTimeTickets, said Friday, blaming a cutback in discretionary corporate spending for the petering out of interest in buying Olympic tickets from outside sources.

Mr. Livich predicted a spike in demand, however, after fans find out whether they are successful in the Vancouver Organizing Committee's last major public offering. The batch of 150,000 tickets up for grabs includes hundreds for the gold-medal men's hockey showdown and about 5,000 each to the glittering opening and closing ceremonies.

"I'll be going online myself to try and get tickets," Mr. Livich said.

Olympic ticket prices posted on his company's website are far above the face value of those distributed by VANOC. Most are being offered by individual ticket holders using ShowTime as a clearing house.

The highest price sought for admission to the Games' showcase event, the men's hockey final, is currently $7,150, nearly 10 times the official top price of $775. Tickets to the opening ceremony are available from ShowTime for a peak price of $2,995. VANOC's listed prices for the same event run from $175 to $1,100.

Mr. Livich agreed that some prospective ticket scalpers have unrealistic expectations about the prices people are willing to pay to attend Olympic events. "They post all kinds of crazy prices [on our site]."

VANOC, meanwhile, anticipates huge interest in its ticket offering next weekend. Unlike the months-long lottery that dispensed about 1.5 million Olympic ducats to the public late last year, a random process that left many hopeful purchasers without a single ticket, these will be sold online on a first-come, first-served basis.

"This is the best remaining opportunity for Canadians to obtain tickets to the Olympics," VANOC ticketing vice-president Caley Denton said. "We expect there will be a huge demand and we ask people to be patient" when they get online.

The sale begins on June 6 at 10 a.m. Vancouver time. Tickets will be available for all Olympic events and the nightly victory ceremonies at B.C. Place. "We are really excited about this, and we are well-prepared," Mr. Denton said, adding that traffic volume will be controlled by first shunting buyers into a virtual waiting room, then releasing them in stages to VANOC's main ticketing site where they can make their purchases.

Customers will be limited to buying tickets for only four separate events at a time.