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The greatest sporting event in the world being held in the greatest city in the world.

I love to go!!

I especially love to see the opening and closing ceremonies

Nice read, Dave. I'm waiting until the hype dies down a bit and then I'll be booking my tickets for definite.

David,

can you find out what happens to the tickets which are purchased but the buyer can not afford? Will these become first come, first served when the remaining tickets go on sale or will they be allocated out again?

Also, when do the remaining tickets go on sale after the initial period?

The chances of getting a premium event tickt must be slim... 2.5m registered, I expect an average of 10-20 tickets on average for a million odd people and the other 1.5m at least 4 tickets each... that will be at least 20m applications for 6.6m tickets... for the mens 100m final... maybe 500k people applying for 2 tickets each for 40,000 tickets.. 5% chance at best especially at the lower prices!! Maybe a boring paragraph but I like to work out the odds of getting the tickets!!!

If you end up with tickets you don't really want (eg. because they clash with another event which you have also been succesful to receive tickets for), there will be the option to re-sell them next year (via the same London 2012 I believe).

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It's an absolute joke

I thought it would be nice to take my daughter and two nieces - at the swimming only one session is available with concession pricing - there are going to be millions of applications for that session alone.

Clearly most people will go for the cheap (well not really) tickets - so if you want to have more of a chance go for the more expensive tickets, hang on a minute that means rich people get more chance of winning!

So no kids (unless they desperately need to fill the venue) and no poor people.

It's a great way to reward the bankers for the state of the economy!

legacy - my ...

How would you do it then Matt?

Really. In what way is an Olympic legacy served by security guards frisking you for Mastercards, Pepsi bottles and Burger King wrappers? That's not protecting an investment. That's just petty. Kids in the school playground petty.

kenningtonmatt, you clearly have not grasped the concept of the ticketing system. It is in fact the supposedly 'rich' people that are paying more for their tickets so that cheaper tickets can be provided. You say no kids are going and yet they have provided over 200 sessions in which kids can pay their age. This is going to be a once in a lifetime spectacle and its coming to London and so people should appreciate how lucky they are that the Olympics are coming to the UK rather than making ill informed complaints.

I wonder how many tickets Lord Coe has applied for?

And how succesful he's gonna be?

jack841... well put!

I am quite happy with the pricing... yes I would like the tickets cheaper but they have to be at a price where the person who buys the ticket will actually go... if the tickets were really cheap as some suggest I would predict alot more empty seats...

Also, can sports editors stop posting about events off the beaten track! The more you blog about them, the more they become on the beaten track and the less chance I have got to see the event!! A bit selfish I know...

Why does the article state that £500m is a quarter of the budget?

Am i alone in recalling that the vastly underpriced bid of £2,365m was raised to over £9 billion?

I'd rather pull my own fingernails out than pay for a ticket.

Pepsi being confiscated because of some other sugary fizzy dark brown watery drink fat cat got in first sums it all up.

Whilst the country teeters on bankruptcy with 10's of 1000's losing their job in cuts....we get to foot the bill to watch a bunch of drones do fun sport.

"This [corporate monopoly born out of exclusive rights], I am afraid, is a fact of Olympic life we are all just going to have to get used to and the Visa deal is part of that."

Therein lies the problem.

Long live Mastercard, Pepsi, Burger King et al.

Other products are of course available.

Not successful in the "lottery" for tickets, or simply not interested in attending?

Simple, boycott the sponsors wherever possible.

Lord Coe can have as many tickets as he likes in my opinion.

If he wants the best seat in the house for the 100m final, then give it to him.

Re 1

You are wrong on both counts.

1. Obviously the world cup is the greatest sporting event in the world.
2. Only those people that live in and around London think that it's the greatest city in the world.

The only thing I'd pay to watch in the whole thing is the 100m final.
I predict a lot of bored schoolchildren spending long days watching minority sports........

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An excellent point has been made on another Olympic blog.

There appears to be NO information on just how many tickets are available at a given price eg £20 for any event.

How likely is it that those who BID for greater priced tickets are more succesful, that more tickets are sold for £50 in line with demand, £20 tickets being reduced.

Even more likley when Lord ( crikey ) Coe has now stated that there are less than 50% of tickets for main events available to the public.

Is it just me or does the stench from the "trough" grow more obnoxious with each passing day?

A moments research on the Royal Mail site indicates that Registered mail charges are nowhere near £6 a time.

Unless of course your tickets are ( thickly )gold plated.

But then i suspect the VIP's won't be reliant on the lottery/auction or Royal Mail.

Just more greed, taking from the "public".

Freedom of Information request anyone?

How many seats, and where precisely, for each and every event? Before they are allocated?


How about you Mr Bond, as a journalist on public pay, how about finding out?

Would make for an interesting blog.

I'm sure confiscation of non sponsor items would violate my human rights!?!? That can't be right, if a criminal is still protected by the numpties in Europe then surely I can still drink whatever fizzy drink I like.

Also, what would happen if the money wasn't in the account? Would it get taken anyway leaving you overdrawn?

Also, it might be £6 depending on all the marketing literature they have to send on behalf of the sponsors.

Lol @ the clock now working properly!

I like many millions of people do not have a Visa card and will certainly not be applying for one. The monopoly given to Visa has effectively excluded a large percentage of the population and now let the games organisers reap the consequences of this shambolic ticketing system. They are going to need an awful lot of primary school children to cover their embarrassment. It will be hilarious, let the games begin, and would somebody please put a battery in that clock.

I just don’t understand why they can’t tell people what they have been allocated before taking the money. This simple step would give people time to get their funds in order.

Failing that a more sensible approach would be to debit a fixed non-refundable deposit from each successful applicant and then give them a period in which to settle the balance – something along the lines of Glastonbury.

Given that this is being billed as a ‘Once in a Lifetime Experience’ people will not want to miss out and will over apply. With the varying cost of tickets/sessions and unpredictability of the ballot, the ticketing strategy is unfairly going to put a serious strain on people’s cash flow and at a time when we are just emerging from recession.

The really perverse thing is that people will be taking out loans on the off chance they are successful and could easily end up being allocated noting from the ballot and will still be left with the interest payments.

If there is anyone from Official Olympic sponsor Lloyds TSB reading this - can you please look into setting up some sort of special Olympics ticket application loan that only releases the money and charges interest IF the applicant is allocated tickets?

Without knowing how many tickets there are for sale in each category then how do we know that any tickets at all will be sold in the lower category?

For instance, if you have an event with 10,000 tickets on sale in three price categories, £100, £50 and £20. Then what's to stop the organisers saying "oh well we've had 13,000 applications for £100 tickets so let's just sell all 10,000 at £100"

It's smart business sense and would help recoup the fact that some events will have almost no sales at all. I used to participate in Olympic Freestyle Wrestling when I was younger and it's not a very well attended sport in this country sadly as one example.

the ticketing system is a farce!

'I'm sure confiscation of non sponsor items would violate my human rights!?!?'

Oh yes that's a human rights issue :P
It's a simple terms and conditions thing. You agree to them when you buy the tickets. If they say you can only wear green, then you can only wear green. The olympic park is not a public space yet. And even then there are rules you have to abide by.


'Also, it might be £6 depending on all the marketing literature they have to send on behalf of the sponsors.'

Or the cost of actually running the ticketing system as well.



'The monopoly given to Visa has effectively excluded a large percentage of the population'

It would only be excluding them if they couldn't get a card or they'd not told people in advance. It's been well known for ages on the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ News and Sport pages as well as the official page, not to mention people's other experiences from years of other sporting events.
People can get a Visa card, noones stopping them. It's not as convienient but it's not excluding anyone.


'Given that this is being billed as a ‘Once in a Lifetime Experience’ people will not want to miss out and will over apply'


Well that's up to an individual's own decision. If you want to put yourself into debt that's your decision. Noone is making you apply for tickets.



'the ticketing strategy is unfairly going to put a serious strain on people’s cash flow'

Very true, but the money needs to go at some point, and I'm sure theres a good reason, like they need to pay for thigs now rather than say next March.


'The really perverse thing is that people will be taking out loans on the off chance they are successful and could easily end up being allocated noting from the ballot and will still be left with the interest payments.'

If you are doing that then you are doing it to yourself and you have to take some personal responsibility. You've had years to save if that's the issue, or you could just have smaller expectations as to what you can see.



'For instance, if you have an event with 10,000 tickets on sale in three price categories, £100, £50 and £20. Then what's to stop the organisers saying "oh well we've had 13,000 applications for £100 tickets so let's just sell all 10,000 at £100'

Legalities and checks and balances I'd guess. All the figures etc we'll find out after the games. Late but it will all be there.

opaqueen, your last post is a rather pathetic attempt to justify an utterly unjust, divisive and shambolic ticketing system that will ultimately lead many people like myself to boycott the Olympic Games. By the way, the Olympic Countdown clock has broken down again, what are the odds of the ticketing system following suit?

For all those people who are crying out at the scandalous payment scheme about only using visa to pay for tickets and saying "I won't apply for a VISA card in protest!" that's fine by me! I don't have a VISA card but for the chance to go to the Olympics I'll get one of their pre-pay cards (as recommended by London 2012)and all those people deciding not to buy tickets gives me all the more chances to win tickets! If you don't like it, don't read the blogs and then fill the comments section with your moaning! Leave those of us looking forward to the Olympics alone to enjoy it!

opaqueen, your last post is a rather pathetic attempt to justify an utterly unjust, divisive and shambolic ticketing system that will ultimately lead many people like myself to boycott the Olympic Games. By the way, the Olympic Countdown clock has broken down again, what are the odds of the ticketing system following suit?

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Wow. Strong language. "Utterly unjust." This is not utterly unjust. Zimbabwe is utterly unjust. Treatment of women in Iran is utterly unjust. Lets use some perspective. Shambolic? Really? In what way? Everything has worked, so how is it shambolic?

Oh yes, and a clock broke down. Which has nothing to do with the 2012 organisers. Omega made that. They did not make the ticketing system. It is irrelevent.

People in Britain just love to complain. It really is quite incredible. I was delighted when I heard aboiut the ticket system. its the best way to do it. If we did the concert way, and put them on sale there on one day there would be a mass rush to get them, which probably would crash the server. Then you would be complaining about that. And it completely stops people who have to work from getting decent tickets. Which you would probably complain about as well. I would not be able to be online at 9am to buy tickets so I would miss out on any decent event.

If you dont have enough money in your account, that is shame, but its not like you havent been warned. If you are that excited about the olympics you have had 6 years to save up. The ticketing system has been known about for a long time, it would not be difficult to be well prepared. Yes, there may be people who spend far more than they would like, but come on, be serious is there really ow way about that? You have no friends, family etc who would offer you money got them?

But please boycott the games. "People like you" are the exact type that we do not want. You complain about everything, everything is a drama, nothing is ever done right. The ticket system is fine. It is a fair way to allocate tickets to the event to ensure everyone has a chance of getting them. While we are all enjoying the most incredible sporting event on the planet taking place in our capital city, you will be at home, watching on TV. Probably complaining about the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ coverage. Or the price of a pint of beer these days. Well, enjoy. We wont miss you.

Mike D re your last post : Even one of our greatest Olympians Daley Thompson has slammed the ticketing system and allocation as "a like it or lump it policy that is a shameful embarrassment to London 2012" I would give Daley's opinion a lot more creedence than yours. Bury your head in the sand and ignore the obvious flaws that have been highlighted.

I thought the £6 admin fee was very fair, as there is no booking fee. Normally when you book tickets there is at least a 10% booking fee, so a £25 ticket coists £27.50. The £20 tickets are good value if you are only going to one event as they include a travelcard for zone 1 to 9 as well which would cost you £11 if you had to buy it yourself, probably more in 2012

After hearing the justifications for the Visa monopoly yesterday I am not reassured. Having to pay by this method effectively excludes a number of groups from attending paid events. Those without bank accounts; those on low wages; the retired unless they obtained a card whilst still working, to name but a few. It seems you can only attend these events if you are either middle class or subscribe to middle class values. The real legacy from these games will be the realisation that our political leaders wave endorsed the exclusion of various groups within our society. This will do nothing to promote inclusion and equality within our country. This is a high price to pay for staging the Games.

Don't forget the ability to order tickets by post and then be able to pay by cheque.

I think the ticket system has lot of problems. Numbers of tickets available should be roughly known (not exactly as they are bound to change some deals)which doesn't help when buying (as you either want it and apply or don't) but would be nice to know. The split of how many tickets are in each category would be good, and knowing the rough seating plans wouldbe good. The idea that the seating isn't arranged is bull, if that was the case then how can we be buying tickets? The number of seats at least is known. Knowing your exact seat in advance isn't possible for the games (you can't compare it to theatre etc, not on the sheer scale) but to be able to see that the seats in purple on this plan are the £45 tickets should be possible.

And yes the gap between having the money taken and finding out your tickets is madness.

But overall the way of ordering tickets is one of only a few ways it could be done. It's not a simple thing to organise.
Not made any easier by facts being hidden.

The lack of seating for major events to allow corporate deals is what is paying for all the free tickets given to the London schoolchildren. Maybe not give away loads of free tickets? Maybe not have the pay your age deal? Make up the money and have more seats at the 100m finals available instead?
You can't have everything.

The Visa card thing isn't great (although cash will be accepted in the venues which is something!) but I'd be more annoyed by the fact that you will only be able to get Macdonalds in the Olympic Park.

Those without bank accounts are a small number of people, and really why should the system pander to them? I don't know but does the person paying have to be the same person choosing?
Those on low wages and the retired can get the prepaid Visa cards, or indeed just apply for a normal Visa card. They do tend to still just give them out to anyone that wants one. Now the credit limit is another issue. But then if these people are all downtrodden proles as they seem to be shown as they won't have much money to spend so it won't be an issue.

There does seem to be a thread going that it's only 'us' who will be going to the games. It's people from all over the world. If you don't want to dg, then there's plenty of people outside the UK that will be happy to take your place.

Personally I'm just really happy that they didn't go down the first come first served way of selling tickets as that really wouldn't have worked.
I'm going for 15 sessions over 11 days that if I got them all it would cost me around £700. I've planned for this, I've budgeted for it and I would say it should be well worth it for the unique experience. Even with the couple of hundred in train fares from Cambridge as well.

opaqueentity - whether in the terms and conditions or not I shouldn't able to be told what fizzy drink my kids or I have to drink. It can't be right. ;-) It's like Virgin trains putting on their train tickets that you can only use virgin mobiles on the train - can you imagint he uproar?!!? I am not overly bothered to be honest but it begs the question as to how they are allowed to get away with it. In all honesty, the more they can charge sponsors for exclusivity the less it costs the tax payer.

The issue for me is I live in Leeds, I've picked the events I want to go to but with a young family I can't look to stay down there for the full two weeks, I'd like to see some track cycling, athletics and the basketball final - the thing is I can't afford to go to all four, they are spread over a week so train tickets and accomodation from up here would be ludicrous. I'd rather pick four in the hope of getting one but there is no way I can afford to pay for all four if I should be lucky (or unlucky) enough to get them. It just doesn't seem right as it gives people in London an unfair advantage for transport costs/accomodation/and the number of tickets/events to apply for. The cost for me to go to 1 £50 event would be £200 for my family tickets, train would £400, plus hotel costs for two rooms. for £700 a family in London could apply for more than three events and therefore stand much more chance of getting tickets. How can that be fair when as tax payers all over the country we are paying for it. I feel like a spoilt 5 year old jumping up and down saying 'it's not fair' but to be honest, that is the way it feels.

'I feel like a spoilt 5 year old jumping up and down saying 'it's not fair' but to be honest, that is the way it feels.'

You sounds like a sensible person saying that compared to some on here. But you make the mistake of thinking that things should be fair. Things are fair, they are just not tipped in your favour.



'It's like Virgin trains putting on their train tickets that you can only use virgin mobiles on the train - can you imagint he uproar?!!? '

Ah, but there are alternative transport suppliers on the trains, you have no choice with the olympics. I don't like it, especially in terms of the food. It's ridiculous as it messes with your experience but it's what happens. Same thing goes with events at Wembley or any other big sporting event, thing is most people don't go to these events so don't know these things happen!


'In all honesty, the more they can charge sponsors for exclusivity the less it costs the tax payer.'

And the ticket buyer. And that is the whole point that many people seem to miss. Although I would like to know numbers on what they are paying to get this exclusivity.


The travel, or rather the accommodation is the killer for most people that aren't living in London. But that would happen anywhere. The biggest city/population is in London, the biggest number of hotel rooms is in London, the transport links for people all over the world coming to the Olympics is in London. You simply can't have it anywhere else.
Tax payers in London are paying for more of it than the rest of us though but they are getting the most benefits, now and in the future because of that.


It costs that much as it would cost that much to go to any major event. The olympics aren't that special in that respect, if anything they are better value for money. I went to the NFL game at Wembley last year and the ticket cost £75. I had 2 nights in a hotel which cost £200 and the tube and train tickets from Cambridge on top. If I was a family the price would have been just as bad
You have the choice of whether to go or not. Imagine how much it's going to cost someone flying from Brazil to attend the same session.

Don't forget that the ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ has the right to show all the events and it's not restricted to whoever paid the highest amount. That is something that IS fair! :)

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