While the Assembly's Economic Development, Culture, Sport and Tourism (EDCST) committee broadly welcomes the ticketing strategy for next year's Olympics in its report published today - entitled "Just The Ticket" - it warns that public confidence could be damaged if government bodies buy too many tickets or fail to publicly account for them.

With London 2012 tickets due to go on sale on March 15, and Paralympic 2012 tickets on sale on September 9, the latest report – put together after discussions with the Games's organisers' director of ticketing in December – presents a timely nudge to the members of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (LOCOG).

Out of a total of 8 million tickets for the Olympics, 6.6 million will be sold directly to the public.

The remainder will be sold to sponsors and athletes, through VIP packages and through foreign Olympic associations.

London 2012 has made available for sale 9,000 tickets for the Government, 2,000 for the Mayor of London, and 100 each for the London Boroughs.

"Our outstanding concerns are about the tickets being made available for sale to various public bodies," the report notes in its foreword.

"We have been making the case since our first report on ticketing, in March 2010, that public confidence will be dented if large numbers of VIPs are seen to be getting preferential access to tickets ahead of the general public.

"In this report, we call on public bodies to show restraint when bidding for preferential access to tickets. In our view, the public should ultimately be the judges of the extent to which public bodies have shown such restraint.

"To make this judgement they will need to know exactly who has asked for tickets, why, and how they will be funded.

"That is why we call on public bodies to publish a register of all the tickets they have received."

Dee Doocey, the deputy chair of the EDCST committee, commented: "Reserving 14,000 tickets for Government does seem excessive.

"Every seat taken up by a Government official or politician is one less seat for the public so it's vital that Government bodies are completely open and transparent about who gets them, why and who ultimately foots the bill."

Accordingly the report recommends that London 2012 set out in its response by May 2011 what final bids for tickets it received from sponsors, central government, the Mayor and local authorities, and how many it provided to each.

It also recommends that the Mayor should publish a register that accounts for any tickets he receives, stating to whom each ticket is allocated and the reason for it. Any case for meeting the cost from public funds needs to be fully made.

The report also calls for the Mayor to make a similar request to central Government.

The Committee has written to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, the Mayor and leaders of each of the London Boroughs requesting details of who will benefit from their ticket allocation, how they are justified and who will bear the cost of each ticket.

On the issue of affordability, the report recommends that London 2012 publishes the number of tickets at each price point for each event when the public sale starts on March 15.

The reports notes that London 2012 has made an effort to "step away from some of the previous practice in Olympic Games and to have a wider range of ticket prices not just across the Games but within each session" whereby the higher prices enable provision of lower priced tickets.

It points out that the ticketing structure includes different price points for each session of sport. For example, there are five price points for the preliminary rounds of Athletics in the Olympic Stadium, with the full adult prices ranging from £20-£150 ($32-$243).

This rises to £50-£725 ($81-$1,172) for the super finals.

The cost of each ticket to an event in London includes a zones 1-6 one day Travelcard.

Tickets for the opening ceremony will start at £20.12 ($32.52) and go up to £2,012 ($3,252).

The most expensive ticket for the closing ceremony will be £1,500 ($2,425).

Asked by the committee how tickets to the most high profile and popular events would be allocated, London 2012 responded that "it was still working" on the distribution.

But the report continued: "It has confirmed though that it is the intention that the distribution will be roughly equal.

"That is, for most five price sessions there will be around a fifth of tickets at each price.

"Different arrangements will apply to the opening and closing ceremonies but 'there will be as many bottom price tickets on sale at £20.12 ($32.52) as top price tickets at £2,012 ($3,252)' although it is not yet clear how many tickets this will involve."

Asked how many tickets will be available for less than £10 ($16), £20 ($32) and £30 ($48), and how these will be distributed, London 2012 provided some indicative figures and percentages of the spread of tickets available at each price band.

"There will be 2.5 million tickets available at £20 ($32) and less and a further one million at £30 ($48) and less," the report said.

London 2012's Director of Ticketing also told the committee that 'two-thirds of our tickets cost £50 ($81) and less, 90 per cent of tickets cost £100 and less".

The report notes: "This would mean roughly 5.8 million tickets and 7.2 million tickets respectively assuming 8.8 million total tickets."

In response to a question about why the 2004 commitment for starting prices of £15 ($24) had not been met, London 2012 told the Committee that "the world had moved on" since the original bid.

The report commented overall that Londo 2012 "has managed to strike the difficult balance between raising money and making tickets affordable," adding: "There are also some other big positives in LOCOG's ticketing proposals such as the cheaper tickets for those aged over 60 and under 16 and the commitment that there will be no booking fee on top of the ticket price.

"We are also delighted that LOCOG has listened to our concerns, and those of disability organisations, and have announced its Ticketcare scheme.

"This will ensure that those disabled people who need a carer to accompany them will be able to apply for a free companion ticket."

The report also recognised that the 75 per cent of tickets that will be available for the public ballot is a higher proportion than in other comparable events.

It also welcomed London 2012's statement that it will not be passing on or selling its database of the details of people who have purchased 2012 tickets - although it noted that a decision is still to be made about passing the database on to the Olympic Park Legacy Company to use as a marketing tool for encouraging a sporting legacy.

Contact the writer of this story at [email protected]


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