- Tickets still on sale for prestige events as fans are put off by sky-high prices
- Games organisers still have 550,000 tickets to shift
- Even Olympic hero Daley Thompson has been unable to get tickets
By
Damien Gayle
03:32 EST, 9 June 2012
|
03:53 EST, 9 June 2012
Furious sports fans hit out at the London Olympics ticket sales process once again yesterday, as event bosses were slammed for trying to flog some for as much as £2,012.
Thousands were trying for their last chance to gain entrance to some of the most popular Olympic events as the latest tranche of tickets went on sale at 11am yesterday morning.
But almost as soon as the tickets went on sale, hundreds were already taking to Twitter to broadcast their frustration at the online buying process.
Wishful thinking? This artist’s impression shows
how the 2012 Games should look in full swing, but LOCOG was facing the
prospect that some stadiums may not be full as the public tires of the ticket buying process
And the London Olympic organising committee (LOCOG) is also coming under pressure to explain its failure to shift ‘prestige’ tickets, on sale for prices ranging between £295 to £1,800.
The tickets that went on sale yesterday, ‘AA’ tickets for the opening ceremony cost £2,012, and the cheapest available for that event were £995. Many were still unsold by 5pm.
So far, 7million of the total 8.8million Olympic tickets have been shifted, and about half of the 2.45million Paralympic tickets, in a process that began last year.
Left out: Former decathlete Daley Thompson has been unable to get any tickets for the games at all
LOCOG still has about 550,000 tickets to sell with just weeks to go to the start of the Games on July 27.
A
large chunk of them are so-called contingency tickets which had been
held back while logistics such as TV camera positions were resolved.
The committee has a further 1.25million soccer tickets to shift – about half the original number.
Yesterday, as the latest tranche of tickets were made available at 11am, hundreds of people took to Twitter to vent their fury.
Even Olympics legend Daley Thompson told how he had failed to get any tickets and had ‘wasted 45 minutes’ on the London 2012 website.
Angry buyers told how they waited for the online system to tell them whether they had secured their chosen tickets only to be told that there were no more available.
Former Olympic gold medal winning decathlete Thompson Tweeted: ‘I bet I’m not alone in being unable to get any tickets on 2012 website wasted 45mins and I want them so badly’
And Television and BBC radio presenter Sarah-Jane Crawford Tweeted: ‘I’m trying to get some tickets for the Olympics but when I click ‘request tickets’ on the site, it just refreshes page and tells me nothing?’
And Twitter used Neil Robertson wrote: ‘Appear to have more chance of winning lottery tonight than getting Olympics tickets!’
LBC presenter Anthony Davis said: ‘I’m in the virtual queue for #Olympics tickets. 3 min wait to see if I’ve been successful. The official ticket website is a joke.
‘Been trying to buy Olympic tickets for 35 mins. Nothing available for under £450 each apparently… gutted.’
Deborah Roback wrote: ‘What a rubbish system, impossible to find available tickets for any event.’ And furious fans also yesterday hit out at the expensive ‘prestige tickets’ on offer.
Paul Roberts, 40, from Essex, told The Sun: ‘We were told it was going to be the Games for the people. But I didn’t realise they were talking about people with big wallets and cash to burn.’
Premium: Tickets to see athletes like Jessica Ennis compete in athletics events are among the most expensive available
London 2012 organisers say the high prices help to subsidise the cheap tickets on offer to the public. Company Prestige Ticketing was given about 80,000 Olympics and Paralympics tickets to sell.
A Prestige spokesman said: ‘The income from these programmes provides a vital source of revenue that makes the Games more accessible.
‘Tickets for the Opening Ceremony would not be available to the public at £20.12 if there were not tickets at £2,012 that subsidise the cheaper ones.’
Experts believe LOCOG has done a good job, having already sold more than 90 percent of its tickets (excluding the football). It is on target to raise the £500million needed towards its £2billion budget.
‘They have a few hundred thousand tickets which millions of people would like to buy, then they have several millions of tickets that nobody wants to buy,’ said Stefan Szymanski of the University of Michigan. ‘And they have a commitment to make every event a sell-out.’
The lottery-style process adopted in the early rounds allowed it to get the best price for the tickets, he said.
‘The problem is that the British public didn’t seem to understand this,’ he added.
Alternatives, such as an auction, would have raised more revenue, but would have been resented even more by a British public that had already forked out £9.3 pounds towards getting the Games ready.
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Like everyone else I know, I have been totally turned off the Olympics by the farsical Security paranoia, the £10bn they cost ( when the country is supposed to have no money ), the rip off ticket prices, rip off food and drink prices and the nauseous propaganda the state media have been pumping out trying to convince us that the whole country is loving the Olympics. I hope most stadiums are half empty. That’ll teach them
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I would not buy them at £10 a ticket, the whole thing is a fiasco
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I now no longer buy anything that has the olympic logo on it. It is wonderful exploring the cheaper alternatives like shops own brands etc.
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Expensive tickets are NOTsubsidising cheap ones if they don’t sell. In fact, it’s quite the opposite! Lol
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Let me present you with a blindingly obvious and simple solution. Let’s watch the games on TV in the comfort of your own lounge, with a can of beer bought from local ASDA at 80p.
– Mike, Scotland, 9/6/2012 14:19
A lot safer too Mike if they’ve got missiles pointing towards the stadium etc,( don’t think I’d be letting my kids participate in this either if I lived down there.)
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Yes. The true Olympic spirit comes to the fore. Pure greed, hope the rich get hit soon, then we really will all be in this together.
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Scottish news last night full of it, the torch has arrived.I’ll be glad when it’s over.
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Let me present you with a blindingly obvious and simple solution. Let’s watch the games on TV in the comfort of your own lounge, with a can of beer bought from local ASDA at 80p.
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Good, I hope they have loads and loads of unfilled seats, greedy beggars!!!
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Started off at 3.3 billion pounds when Liebour were in power now running at around 10 billion pounds and could rise as high as 20/25 billion.£7 pound a pint £8 quid for fish and chips.rip off Briton at its finest.I hope its a total flop.
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