London ’12 Ticket Seller in Europe Forced to Stop Due to High Demand

May 24, 2011

UK-based Sportsworld, which is selling tickets to Denmark for London 2012, has stopped taking orders following a flood of requests after the Sunday Times alerted British readers to it.

Under EU law all European citizens are entitled to apply for these tickets although London 2012 organisers have warned fans buying tickets from foreign websites to be “extremely cautious” about touts.

UK’s sports fans are still waiting to hear whether they have been allocated tickets in the controversial ballot system and if money is not withdrawn from their accounts by June 10 they will not have received any tickets.

Anyone trying to book tickets via the Sportsworld website on Monday received a message saying: “Please Note: We are currently reviewing existing ticket orders and as a result there are no London 2012 Olympic Games tickets available until further notice.”

It is the official seller to a dozen countries but Denmark is the only one of them which is in the EU. Under EU law all European citizens are entitled to apply for these tickets, in the same way that Danish citizens were entitled to apply via the London 2012 website as part of the main application process.

A spokesman for organising committee LOCOG said one million tickets had been allocated to Olympic committees in about 200 countries outside the UK, adding: “There are a number of unofficial websites claiming to sell tickets, we therefore advise people to be extremely cautious and vigilant when attempting to buy tickets and only purchase from an official source – if in doubt there is a url checker on our website which will identify official sources.”