Tickets for 2012 Olympic games on sale today
15 March 2011 10:22
London 2012 chairman Lord Coe is confident of sell-outs and said that organisers are in "good shape" to handle demand as tickets for the 2012 Olympics go on sale.
With 500 days to go to the start of the Games, Lord Coe is convinced the technology is in place to avoid a computer meltdown. He is advising sports fans there is no point in a first-day rush to get the 6.6 million tickets.
Describing it as "a marathon and not a sprint", he said: "I think that we have done everything that we can given the scale and the complexity.
"This is the third online retail in the world (behind eBay and Amazon).
"I am not naive about the scale of the operation here."
London 2012 are urging sports fans to apply at any time during the six-week application period up to April 26 at 11.59pm. It is not a first-come first-served system and there will be no greater chance of getting a ticket if you apply on the first day than later.
It is hoped the long application window may help to ensure the system does not crash and make would-be buyers vulnerable to bogus websites.
A series of measures have been launched to thwart the fraudsters at the 2012 Games.
The maximum fine for ticket-touting at the Olympics is going up from £5,000 to £20,000 and a team of Scotland Yard detectives have already made 49 arrests to combating touts.
Lord Coe is confident that the tickets will be sold stating: "I think that people will view this as one of those life-changing moments and will want to be there."
So far over 2.5 million have signed up to London 2012's ticket information website and around 2 million have said they want to watch the track and field competitions.
Tickets will cost range from £20 to £2,012.
About 2.5 million tickets across more than 200 events will cost £20 or under with sports fan paying an average of £47 to watch an event, according to Lord Coe.
He argues this compares well with other top sports events like the Champions League or the Premiership.
"They come around every year," Lord Coe notes adding that a home Olympics will not come around again during our lifetimes.
However, some of the tickets for London 2012 come in rather steep, including a cost of up to £2,012 for the opening ceremony, up to £725 for the showpiece 100m athletics final and between £50 and £325 for the track cycling finals.
However, London 2012 has launched a series of discount schemes, driven by a £25 levy on hospitality tickets, aiming at getting both young and old people to the events.
The Ticketshare scheme focuses on secondary schools. There is also the Pay Your Age scheme in which under 16 year-olds will pay their age while the over-60s pay a flat £16 rate.
"Unashamedly some of the high price tickets have made that possible and I think that is the way it should be," Lord Coe argues. "I think we have got a Games where a good chunk of these tickets are affordable."
A ballot will decide who gets seats for the oversubscribed hot ticket events.
Lord Coe could not say whether only people who had tried but failed to secure a place to watch the oversubscribed events would be allowed in to the ballot.
He said: "All these matters will be decided by the process itself and what we uncover when we get through that process - who wants what, where they are and some of the extra things from that."
Of the 2.5 million people that have signed up for tickets, 50% are from outside the south east and 4% are from overseas.
Asked if he is confident that Britons will be able to get hold of the tickets, Lord Coe said: "Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
"It is within the EU that we are able to revisit that, if we felt it was getting out of kilter - but I can tell you that it is not going to happen.
"We are not marketing these tickets overseas."
People wanting to buy overseas are "quite a sophisticated lot and in large part they know they need to get their tickets through their National Olympic Committees."
He accepts that with many people on tight budgets during these tough times for the economy, paying out for an Olympic ticket may be a difficult purchase.
Lord Coe stated: "I am not being cavalier about this. We take nothing for granted. This is difficult for people but I am mightily encouraged by the 2.5 million sitting on the website."
London 2012 officials, who must raise £2 billion from the private sector to stage the Games, have been working for two years towards the start of vital ticket sales.They need to get 25% of revenue from ticket sales.
Lord Coe stressed: "We have tried really hard here. If you ask me what have we gone that extra mile on - it is important that those tickets are accessible and affordable in line with what we said in Singapore (when London won the right to host the Games)."
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