LOCOG Claim Most Applicants Cards to be Debited by Next Week

Organisers of next year’s London Olympics (LOCOG) have announced that most of the money for the first round of Olympics tickets sales will be debited from ticket applicants’ bank accounts by next week.

LOCOG said 60 per cent of cards would be debited by midnight on Wednesday, the “vast majority” by 31 May, and the process completed by 10 June. The payment process had been due to begin on 10 May, but so far no cards had been debited.

LOCOG revealed that the second round of sales, in late June, will initially offer unsuccessful first round ticket applicants the first chance to buy those tickets still available on a first come, first served basis before the public who did not originally apply are able to buy tickets.

Initial applicants will be contacted before 24 June to confirm if they have been successful in buying any of the 6.6 million tickets available, and which ones they have been allocated.

The e-mail sent out to these applicants stated that Visa payments would only be taken for successful applications, and that if cards had been lost or stolen, or there were any issues with collection of payment, applicants would be contacted about it by 10 June.

LOCOG deputy chairman Keith Mills said they were trying to make sure the system was “fair and even” and that people were informed at the same time about whether their application had been successful.

He told BBC Radio 5 Live: “One of the problems when you are doing something on this scale is if you tell one person they’ve got tickets, they tell their friends and suddenly we have a switchboard jammed with people – so we are trying to do this extremely thoroughly.”

“It’s going brilliantly well – it’s very complex, but it is going brilliantly well,” he added.

He added that hundreds of thousands of unsold tickets would be available to buy later in the year.