500,000 Olympic football tickets withdrawn
Reuters - Tuesday 17 July 2012, 14:38
Half a million tickets for
Olympic football matches have been withdrawn and stadium
capacities reduced due to a lack of take-up, Games organisers
said on Tuesday.
Organisers will reduce capacities across venues by closing
tiers of stadiums or whole sections of a ground.
Even after the reduction, 250,000 tickets are still
available with a further 200,000 set to be put up for sale
before the Games begin on July 27.
Games chief Seb Coe defended the move and said football ticket
sales compared favourably with previous Olympics.
"They are in reduced size venues of course, we've had to
scale down the size of those venues," Coe told reporters.
"We've sold more football tickets than we've sold anything
else, we've got 37-38,000 tickets we've sold for Britain ladies
v New Zealand which I think benchmarks pretty well for instance
with the women's FA Cup final this year which was an all-London
affair at the Emirates [Stadium] and they had about 5,000.
"We are not in bad shape on tickets but football tickets at
a Games are always the challenge. I think we'll do pretty well."
The football competition is set to take place in six venues
across Britain including the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, City
of Coventry Stadium, Old Trafford in Manchester, St James' Park
in Newcastle, Hampden Park in Glasgow and London's Wembley
Stadium which will host both the men's and women's finals.
Organisers will also make 150,000 tickets available
for school children through their Ticketshare scheme.
Fifty thousand non-football tickets are still available for
the Games and a further 200,000 will be put up for general sale
in the next ten days.
Tickets are still available for sports including athletics,
hockey and beach volleyball, while there are still some seats
available in the higher price bands for the opening and closing
ceremonies.
Games organisers have been dogged by criticism throughout
the ticketing sales process with fans frustrated by online
delays.