Glitch Forces London 2012 Ticket Application Extension

The deadline to apply for tickets for the London 2012 Olympics has now closed after being extended by over an hour last night after the website was overwhelmed due to a late surge in applications.

When the official Ticketmaster site failed to cope with the last minute demand before the midnight deadline, unhealthy potential customers who had pre-registered to buy tickets faced long delays to complete their transactions.

As the website suffered problems for about 20 minutes from 22:30, ed London 2012 were forced to respond quickly by extending the deadline by one hour to 01:00 (GMT).

In spite of the late glitch in the system, the deadline has now closed for the 6.6 million tickets after a six-week window for applications and a London 2012 spokesman told the Daily Telegraph last night: “Some people experienced temporary delay in accessing the Olympic ticketing site following a surge of applications around 22:30 this evening.

“This surge has now evened out and the system is working normally. Applications were still being processed during this period. We apologise for any inconvenience this delay may have caused and the ticketing system will remain open until 01:00.”

A LOCOG spokesman said the organisation would “attempt on more than one occasion” to get funds from any rejected Visa card accounts, confirming that people without sufficient funds in their bank accounts to pay for tickets will not have their orders cancelled immediately.