Sebastian Coe Dismisses Claims of Lack of Transparency on 2012 Ticketing

(ATR) LOCOG chairman Sebastian Coe and chief executive Paul Deighton today tried to clear up the confusion around Olympic Stadium tickets and explain why a breakdown of all sales is not yet available.

Olympics organizers have been under fire about ticketing issues for the past year, after many people missed out in the first two public ballots and concerns that Games officials and VIPs are getting preferential treatment over the British public in the allocation of tickets. In January, the ticket resale website was out of operation for 11 days because of computer problems.

Appearing before the London Assembly Wednesday, Coe and Deighton were accused of a "chronic lack of transparency" and "obsessive secrecy" on ticket sales by two members at the nearly two-hour long question and answer session.

One Labour party member, John Biggs, said LOCOG was "a closed Oligopoly, running Lord Coe's Olympics".

Responding to the claims, Coe spoke about the difficulty in organizing ticket sales for the 26 Olympic sports that will be staged simultaneously across 36 venues during the Games.

"This is a very complicated process, one of perpetual motion. We will give a comprehensive breakdown after ticket sales are complete," Coe said.

The double Olympic champion told the Assembly officials that it would be "inaccurate and frankly dangerously misleading" to provide figures to ticket sales across every sport and price category with 20 weeks to go to the Games.

He explained that with 11 temporary venues to construct by June or early July it was hard for LOCOG to get a clear picture of what tickets were left for sale. Coe cited the example of the ExCel arena, home to seven sports and five different venues, which will stage 143 sessions at the Olympics.

He said he wanted LOCOG's attention to be on selling the rest of the 4 million tickets for the Games rather than presenting a distorted assessment of ticket sales for "every single client group and every single session".

"We are being entirely transparent here and determined to get through this ticketing process in the way we outlined to you. We have done absolutely everything that we promised."

He emphasized that LOCOG was meeting it objectives to fill out venues, to deliver tickets at affordable prices - 2.5 million are priced under 20, two-thirds 50 or less - to ensure 75 percent of all tickets are in the hands of the British public and to achieve its revenue goals.

"On every commitment that we laid out, we will meet," he said.

"We don't have problems. We have had 1.9 million people who have applied for 23 million tickets. In the history of sports ticketing there's never been that level of demand for public tickets," he added.

Deighton gave a thorough breakdown of the available seats available for the British public in the Olympic Stadium when quizzed about concerns over how many would get to see the men’s 100m final.

With two giant screens, one at each end, the capacity would drop to 75,500. A further 17,500 "seat kills" were down to necessary allocations for 10,000 media, provision for 2,000 athletes, 2000 for accredited IOC international federations and 3,000 because of obstructed views caused by press and camera positions.

The overall capacity available to ticket holders is around 58,000. Deighton confirmed that more than 50 percent of tickets available for events at the stadium had been put on sale to the British public. There are still 8 to 9,000 still available which will be sold in April. Sponsors and hospitality partners take up rest of the tickets for the Olympic Stadium.

The LOCOG leaders were also quizzed by Assembly members about other burning issues in the build-up to the Games.

Questions came about bogus ticketing websites, the use of specially designated Olympic lanes in London's Olympic Road Network and Dow Chemical's controversial sponsorship of the Games.

Not for the first time, Coe defended London 2012's partnership with Dow amid ongoing concerns about the company's link to the 1984 gas disaster in Bhopal, India that killed thousands of people and left many more thousands injured.

Coe said he was "absolutely satisfied" with LOCOG's sustainable procurement process, adding that court settlement had been made in India and restating that Dow was not responsible for the tragedy.

On Thursday, the London Assembly questions the Met Police and emergency services officials about their readiness for the Olympics and lessons learnt from handling last summer's riots in the city.

Reported by Mark Bisson

20 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is AroundTheRings.com, for subscribers only.