Coe / Robertson Defend Olympic Ticket System Despite Complaints

After around 250,000 of the 1.8 million ticket applicants for the London 2012 Games were left disappointed and ticketless, chairman of the organising committee Sebasiten Coe defended the widely criticised process.

The system has been blasted for being too vague and weighted towards more wealthy applicants with the means to apply for hundreds, even thousands, of pounds worth of tickets.

Coe said he realised some people would be “bitterly disappointed” but defended the system as the fairest available, saying that had they used a first-come-first-served system, there would be many more complaints.

Coe added: “I think it was right to give people over a 1,000 hours to really understand what it was they were wanting, and where the venues were and session-by-session.

“There are tickets still to be had. It’s certainly not been a fiasco. We talked to the best brains in this business.”

Olympics minister Hugh Robertson told Sky News: “Ticketing is always an extremely difficult subject in any Olympic Games and I think the organising committee have done as well as could possibly be expected against some very trying circumstances”.

A further 2.2 million tickets remain to be allocated, with the majority earmarked for overseas fans through their national Olympic associations and the remainder going to sponsors, federations, the Olympic family and rights holders.