2012 organisers make ticket pledge 21/07/2010
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Organisers of the 2012 Olympics have promised full stadiums for all events and "affordable" ticket prices for the general public when the Games come to London.
Paul Deighton, chief executive of organising committee Locog, said 75 per cent of tickets for the event will go into a public ballot – a much higher proportion than for the World Cup finals in football or rugby.
In an interview with the Guardian, Deighton insisted that ticketing policies at the Games will favour the public before sponsors' guests and corporate hospitality packages, though full details of pricing structures will not be released until October.
"We'll have 75 per cent of the total tickets in the ballot for the general public," he said. "Of the remaining 25 per cent, about 16 per cent will be sold to the international general public through the respective national Olympic committees.
"The remaining 9 per cent gets distributed to corporate hospitality, broadcasters and the International Olympic Committee. So we're treating people right."
At the World Cup in South Africa, organisers were left with rows of empty seats despite claiming the finals were more than 95 per cent sold out – an issue that also affected the last Olympics in Beijing.
Deighton continued: "We want to make sure the venues are full, which sounds an obvious objective. But one of the big disappointments in Beijing [the 2008 Olympics] was that, even though they'd sold all the tickets, the venues were often far from full. That's a travesty. We'll do everything we can to keep the stadiums full – and the first way to do that is to place tickets with people who really want to come."
He did, however, acknowledge that opportunities to see Usain Bolt in the 100m final will remain strictly limited, and that only "people with privileged access will be there". But he added that "someone like Bolt will be making eight or nine appearances and so there'll be a big chunk of the general public at different sessions".
"We want to make tickets accessible and affordable – and ensure that there are a lot of them for the public,” Deighton stressed. “Of course 'affordable' is a moveable feast. But when people see our ticket prices and compare them to other things you buy tickets for in London, and see the range of offers we've got at lower-entry events, I think they'll say, 'Yeah, that's all right.' "
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