Re-sell the London 2012 Olympic tickets!

The International Olympic Committee awarded the 2012 Games to London on 6th July 2005.

Being such a big Olympics fan, and having been to see two Olympics Games by then, Barcelona in 1992, and Athens in 2004, I was absolutely delighted that our capital city had got the Games; but in 2011, I, like tens of thousands of other British sports fans, was dismayed by the way in which tickets were sold to the UK public.

The London 2012 Olympic Committee, LOCOG, set up a system in which people had to stake a certain amount of money to try and get tickets. People ordered tickets, but had no idea of what they would get. Some people ‘gambled’, for example ordering £10,000 worth of tickets in the hope that they would get the £2,000 or £3,000 worth that they really wanted. Some of these people ended up with way more tickets that they needed, and will have to re-sell them.

The “Second Chance” sales, in which people were supposed to have an opportunity to get other tickets, were a well-publicised farce, with the LOCOG website crashing within minutes.

There has also been a worrying lack of transparency surrounding the whole process; it has been difficult to find out exactly what has gone on.

Tens of thousands of UK sports fans have lost the chance to see a once in a lifetime Olympic Games in their home country.

Why has London 2012 allowed a situation like this to arise when it could just have organised a better method of allocating the tickets in the first place?

Here are some of the problems and criticisms of the ticket selling process as reported in various newspapers and media sites:

London Evening Standard:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23961753-two-out-of-three-miss-out-on-olympics-tickets.do

The Independent

http://www.independent.co.uk/sport/olympics/london-2012-ticketing-problems-continue-2302559.html

The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/jan/09/london-2012-olympic-games-ticket

Skysports

http://www1.skysports.com/olympics/story/15234/6970722

The Daily Mail

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1393111/London-mayor-Boris-Johnson-fails-Olympics-2012-tickets.html

I believe that the ticket selling process for London 2012 could have been done in a better, fairer way. I also believe that even now, in February 2012, it is not too late to re-sell the tickets.

Before writing this Hub, I needed to do a bit of research. I particularly needed two important pieces of information:

How many London 2012 Olympic tickets were available in total?

And:

How many people had APPLIED for those tickets?

I contacted London 2012 and asked them if they could answer the above questions. At first they were reluctant to give me any information at all, telling me that it was ‘commercially sensitive’.

I sent further messages, and sent a letter. In all of these further communications, I mentioned the Freedom of Information Act 2000. Although they said that the Act did not apply to them as they were a private, not public, organisation, they did eventually release more information, (below) but not the key piece of information, how many people had applied.

Dear David,

Thank you for your email.

I am afraid we are not able to answer your specific questions. However, we can give you the following information:

We have 8.8 million tickets available for the Olympic Games. 75 per cent (6.6 million) will be made available to the British public through the public sales process, from the start of ticket sales to the end of the Games.

12 per cent are made available to international fans through Approved Ticket Resellers (ATRs) via National Olympic Committees (NOCs) in the same way as the British public have bought tickets to Olympic Games held in other countries.

8 per cent of Olympic Games tickets are bought by sponsors, broadcasters and the British Olympic Association (BOA).

5 per cent of Olympic Games tickets are bought by International Federations, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and hospitality and travel providers.

For sessions where demand exceeded the supply of available tickets, an automated and random selection process (ballot) took place using special ticketing system software. This random selection process is now standard for all major international sporting events including the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games, the Beijing 2008 Olympic and Paralympic Games and the Athens 2004 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games Limited (LOCOG) is a private company and is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

We trust the above information is of use.

Best wishes,

Daniel on behalf of The London 2012 Ticketing Team.

The big problem here is that without that key piece of information, how many people applied for tickets, it is impossible to divide the number of tickets available by the number of applicants with any certainty, and thus get an idea of how many people could have got tickets if they had been more allocated more fairly.

In the absence of information from LOCOG, I have based the following calculation on the internet article here:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-olympics/article-23973598-jacques-rogge-defends-cruel-olympic-ticket-lottery-system.do

This London Evening Standard article states that 2 million people made 22 million applications for 7 million tickets. (The actual ticket figure I got from LOCOG was 6.6 million available to the UK public).

Using the LES information, let’s do a basic calculation. Divide 6.6 million tickets by 2 million people, and on average, in an ideal situation, each person would have got 3.3 tickets. Those are the very basic facts based on the information in the article.

Let’s move on a stage further. You can’t allocate someone 1/3 of a ticket; the 2 million people couldn’t have got 3.3 tickets each. So for argument’s sake, let’s divide the 6.6 million tickets up like this:

2,000,000 applicants, 6,600,000 tickets

300,000 applicants get 6 tickets each; 300,000 x 6= 1,800,000

400,000 applicants get 4 tickets each; 400,000 x 6= 1,600,000

600,000 applicants get 3 tickets each; 600,000 x 3= 1,800,000

700,000 applicants get 2 tickets each; 700,000 x 2= 1,400,000

This demonstrates that providing the London Evening Standard figures for the number of people who applied is correct, then there WERE enough tickets to go around; in theory, everyone who applied could have got at least 2 tickets, which for a start is better than what actually happened in the lottery, where some people with enough money to take big risks got dozens of tickets, more than they wanted, and others got none at all.

I CALL UPON LORD COE AND THE LONDON 2012 OLYMPIC ORGANISING COMMITTEE TO RE-SELL THE LONDON 2012 TICKETS

First of all, this month, February, since no hardcopies of tickets have been sent out yet, declare the original sale null and void, and refund all monies paid so far by all ticket purchasers.

The Games are scheduled to begin on Friday 27^th July. There are four full months before then to resell tickets, March, April, May and June.

Have FOUR general sales in total, one in each of these four months; one single sale would lead to chaos and almost certainly cause any website to crash.

Tickets would be sold on a first-come, first-served basis, but in such a way as to prevent any one household from getting too many tickets.

There are two ways to have a fair first-come, first-served sale. The first way is based on the calculation above:

Four sales, the first two sales for families or groups only:

• in the first sale, 300,000 people, comprising 50,000 larger families or groups, including the families of Olympic competitors, would be able to register and buy up to six tickets per family/group;
• in the second sale, 400,000 people, comprising 100,000 smaller families or groups would be able to register and buy, taking up to four tickets per family/group;

The second two sales would be for couples/pairs of friends/individuals:

• in the third sale, 600,000 people, perhaps 200,000 couples/pairs of friends, and 200,000 individuals, would only be able to buy up to three tickets each;
• in the fourth sale, 700,000 individuals would be able to buy up to two tickets each.

Finally, in the first week of July 2012, have a ninth sale, lasting several days, an Olympic ticket clearance sale, in which any unsold tickets would be offered. Anyone could apply, for whatever tickets were still available.

Each household would only be able to apply in one of the four general sales, but could apply again in the clearance sale.

Advantages:

very fair, families, groups and families of competitors have a chance of getting up to six tickets, everyone else has a chance of getting between 2 and 3 tickets.

Disadvantages:

very tight, each household would only be able to get a maximum of six tickets, limiting the number of sports they could see; no guarantee that any of the other tickets they want may be left in the clearance sale.

This is the other way:

• Again, four general sales and one clearance sale, but this time:
• 500,000 people able to apply in each sale;
• no distinction between families, groups or individuals;
• each household able to apply in two of the four sales;
• able to buy a maximum of two tickets for each event, and choose up to five events, therefore can get up to twenty tickets in the two general sales, and possibly some more in the clearance sale.

Advantages:

Enables households to get more tickets, up to twenty, possibly extra in the clearance sale.

Disadvantages:

Higher number of tickets bought per household means that some people would miss out on tickets they wanted or not get tickets at all.

Whichever sales method is used, the actual tickets could be spread more fairly if LOCOG divided the number of event seats by the number of general sales.

Example:

There are 80,000 seats in the Olympic Stadium; allowing for overseas fans, VIP’s, press, etc, let’s say 65,000 are available to the UK public on the evening of the 100 Metres Men’s Final; just divide 65,000 by four, 16,250; therefore make 16,250 tickets available for the 100 Metres event in each one of the four general sales. Any that didn't sell would be carried to the clearance sale.

The Aquatics Centre has 17,500 seats; again, let’s say 15,000 are available on the evening of the Women’s 200 Metres Butterfly Final; divide 15,000 by 4, 4,375 tickets would be available for each of the four general sales, carry any that didn't sell on to the clearance sale.

This method of dividing tickets could easily be duplicated for every single event at the Games.

As my friend pointed out when reviewing the draft of this article for me, nulling the original sale is going to cause a problem with people who have already gone through the stress of the lottery process.

The only easy, low cost remedy I can suggest here is to give all those people who applied originally exclusive rights to apply first in the new sales. This should not be a big problem, as most of the same people will be applying again anyway. The difference is that this time around, they would be limited in the number of tickets they could get; however, they would know what they had got immediately, and would not have to ‘gamble’ large amounts of money.

Other remedies are possible, e.g. offering them some free tickets, or offering them a discount on prices, but with such a large number of people involved, this would soon run up quite a debt for LOCOG, which is the main thing it is trying to avoid.

There is also the problem of contract law, with some ticket buyers possibly having rights to sue LOCOG, but I haven’t looked into that in detail, as it is beyond the scope of what I am writing about here.

Finally, the giant screen at “Henman/Murray Hill” has proved very popular at Wimbledon over the last decade or more for people who cannot get tickets for the big Centre Court tennis matches.

This London Evening Standard article from the end of 2010 says that there were plans in place to set up similar big screens in the Olympic Park.

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23905825-thousands-to-see-olympic-games-on-henman-hill-giant-screens.do

This now seems to have gone quiet, and there now seems to be a plan to have screens in Hyde Park and Trafalgar Square, rather than at the Olympic Park.

I hope LOCOG does set up set up several giant screens at strategic locations in the Olympic Park, because, as at Wimbledon, people who cannot get tickets for events in the venues can watch the big screens and enjoy the Olympic Park atmosphere.

Those people could be allowed to enter the Olympic Park for a nominal fee, say £10.00 per person, with reduced rates for children, pensioners, etc. (£10.00 is the price of a basic entry only ticket to Wimbledon)

It could also earn LOCOG substantial extra revenue; if, say, 15,000 people were allowed into the park to watch events on the giant screens on every one of the 14 days of the games, 14 x 15,000 at £10 per head would be an extra £2,100,000. Perhaps ground tickets to see the opening and closing ceremonies on the big screens could cost a bit more, £15-£20.

Copyright David Sakho, 2012

Because this Hub is potentially controversial, I decided to ask someone else to review it before I published it.

I would like to thank my friend Jags, a passionate athletics fan, for reviewing my draft of this article and pointing out where I could make improvements.

Here are link to other Hubs about London 2012:

http://cyclingfitness.hubpages.com/hub/How-To-See-The-London-2012-Olympics-For-Free-and-Without-Tickets

http://emsmith.hubpages.com/hub/London-2012-Olympics-More-ever-increasing-costs-and-financial-worries-for-the-UK-taxpayer

http://yourglobalgirl.hubpages.com/hub/Have-You-Seen-the-London-2012-Olympic-Games-Programme

http://ladye.hubpages.com/hub/A-Z-Guide-of-Visiting-London-for-Olympics-2012

http://azure11.hubpages.com/hub/Free-Olympic-Events

I have created a petition at Go-Petition asking for a resale of the London 2012 tickets. See it and sign it here:

http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/re-sell-the-london-2012-olympic-tickets.html