News In Depth
- 17 July 2012, 14:49
700,000 Olympics tickets unsold
Around 700,000 Olympics tickets are yet to be sold while capacity at a number of football games has been reduced, organisers say.
Locog said 250,000 football tickets were currently on sale while 50,000 tickets are available to buy for other sports at the moment.
In addition to this, 200,000 football tickets and 200,000 tickets for other sports are due to go on sale after being returned by Olympics committees from around the world.
Organisers said there had been around one million football tickets left but these have been cut in half by reducing capacity at stadiums.
A spokesman for Locog said: "We are planning to reduce capacity across the venues by up to 500,000 tickets across the tournament.
"This will involve possibly not using a tier, or an area of a ground, in some of the venues.
"This can apply to men's and women's football, if necessary."
London 2012 chairman Lord Coe insisted that ticket sales were "not in bad shape".
Speaking at the first daily press briefing at the Olympic Park in Stratford, east London, Lord Coe said about 150,000 football tickets would also be available through the Ticketshare programme.
He added: "They are in reduced-size venues of course, we have scaled down the size of those venues.
"We've sold more football tickets than we've sold for anything else.
"We're not in bad shape on tickets. It was always going to be that football tickets were the challenge but I think we'll do pretty well."
what do you think?
fish41
reduce the capacity at football grounds so that they "look" full rather than a ticketing embarassment wth loads of empty spaces. Too late to give them away to school kids coz they break up. thinking about it was it a good time to stage the games when half the population goes on holiday. Week away with wife and kids chilling out on some beach or waiting for hours in queues either in the rain or sweltering sun , playing spot the G4S security man just to get in to pay hiked up prices to eat un healthy food and watch a race thats over in less than 10 seconds. At least Briton should win Gold in the co-ck up event and the cynic cup.
Brian Holmes
People didn't buy tickets because they can't afford to go to the Olympics. They know that Rip Off Britain will be operating absolutely everywhere. And they know that there will be unnecessary security alerts and public transport chaos. But will lessons be learned? Not a chance!
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Roger Siviter
I shall abstain from this one----the previous posts say it all!
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David Wragg
So much for all those who were unlucky in the draw. I think the ethos of the Olympic Games has been lost somewhere along the line. Over-priced, with the catering concession given to a junk food outlet, big questions over transport, no doubt a prolonged security-screening before anyone gets close to the events, yet the security organisers have failed to provide the contracted number of personnel. Prices of accommodation in London up - no doubt taxi fares will be up as well as they try to find routes that avoid the 'Olympic lanes'. All this amidst a global recession. No doubt Blair, Brown and Cameron will be saying what an honour it is for Britain to host the Olympic Games, but that is their vanity. Who let someone like Lord Coe organise this, or even talk Blair into bidding for it? It is all vanity without any sanity!
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Brian Holmes
3:20pm on 17/7/2012
An insight into why the tickets have not sold in the numbers they hoped would have been useful. Not that we don't know the answer!