Olympic Ticket Saga Continues: Many Disappointed

By · June 7, 2011 at 9:30 am · 11 Comments · Latest News · Report an error ·

We wouldn’t normally start a post this early in the morning with a maths lesson, but here’s a sum for you to ponder over your coffee. If there are 6.6m tickets for the Olympics available and 1.8m people apply for them, what percentage of applicants will be unsuccessful? The answer is around 55%.

Demand for the cheaper tickets meant that some events were massively oversubscribed, leading to disappointment for many, including London’s very own mayor. But as some, including MayorWatch, point out, Boris Johnson has access to the Olympics anyway so his very public fuss about losing out is a tad disingenuous.

Predictably, there have been complaints about the allocation process, particularly where people (including the government) have thrown caution to the winds and applied for multiple tickets. The balloting and curiously secretive method that LOCOG used to inform successful applicants weren’t ideal, but with a finite number of tickets their options were somewhat limited.

The second draw will open at the end of June, but with all the cheaper tickets snapped up already, applicants could find themselves with a bigger credit card bill than they had bargained for. However, if you’ve got a spare £27,000, you can see the men’s 100m final by buying a corporate hospitality package. We’re just off to check down the back of the sofa.

Were you an Olympic winner or loser? Tell us in the comments.

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  • Ben

    nil, nad, natch, not a budgerigar

  • Ben

    nil, nad, natch, not a budgerigar

  • Mish

    I was a winner, but only got £86 worth of tickets and applied for £960. I know someone that applied for £7,000 of tickets and got £1,100 worth. Not sure how they worked it, but at least I get to see something, just not sure what it is yet. Come on Womens Beach Volleyball!!! Or the Opening Ceremony of course.

  • Rachel

    I’m a loser!wahh. 

  • Anonymous

    I think the real problem was that expectations weren’t managed properly.  Venue size plays a part (diving in Beijing was such a small venue and 50% was taken by press, so tickets were extremely hard to come by) as does overall popularity of the sport and of course, the percentage of tickets allocated to each country and the press/sponsors. 

    It also depends on how you approach it – are you taking a few days off work or are you full-on Going To The Olympics?  We’re Going; and applied for a wide range of dates and sessions, which I’m sure helped.  Living in London does make it easier to plan; we can go to work the days we don’t have any tickets.

    We knew what we were in for from Beijing in 2008.  My husband wrote a post about it to share with friends (http://blog.jedchristiansen.com/2011/03/13/your-guide-to-getting-london-2012-olympics-tickets/).

    Since we followed our own advice (going for a mix of big ticket (men’s 100m finals) and low-exposure (Greco-Roman wrestling semis), we got about 30% of tickets we applied for.  We doubled on our really high-priority events, like rowing, and were willing to spend in a higher bracket to avoid disappointment.  We did go for some cheaper tickets to Judo or Canoe Slalom to experience new sports, too.

    We may very well have tickets to 3 events on the same night, but we knew that while it would be difficult to get tickets in the first place, we wouldn’t have any problem finding people to take the extras.

    • Alice

      Agreed on the (lack of) expectation management.
      The post on your husband’s blog was great…a little late to follow the advice though!
      I was happy to hear that you enjoyed Greco-Roman wrestling because we added it to our application as a low-exposure sport and, guessing from the debit amount, I think we got tickets.

    • Alice

      Agreed on the (lack of) expectation management.
      The post on your husband’s blog was great…a little late to follow the advice though!
      I was happy to hear that you enjoyed Greco-Roman wrestling because we added it to our application as a low-exposure sport and, guessing from the debit amount, I think we got tickets.

  • Badenmorgan

    Applied for £1461 and got £262 worth.  It’ll probably be basketball and hockey, but if you wanted a chance of getting ‘cheap’ ticktes you had to go for such events.

  • Badenmorgan

    Applied for £1461 and got £262 worth.  It’ll probably be basketball and hockey, but if you wanted a chance of getting ‘cheap’ ticktes you had to go for such events.

    • Rebeccalouisescott

      Applied for about 960, got 146. Reckon it’s athletics, which is a little odd, as we applied for some of the lower profile events eg trampolining and synchro swimming. My parents and inlays both missed out on all their selections.

  • Ruby

    We only applied for £160 worth and have been charged £46 so we’ve got one out of our four selections which isn’t too bad considering the number of people who’ve missed out altogether. Like Badenmorgan we went for hockey as one of our options on the basis that there were so many tickets for it you stood a good chance of getting one of them. Still you never know we might have got the mountain biking instead. 

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