By Andrew Gibson
Many people have been left disappointed again after not being able to get tickets for the 2012 Olympic Games in London. There were 1.2 million applications for tickets in this second round of ticket offerings, when they were allocated on a first come, first serve basis.
There were problems with some people being told that they had been successful in their application and then finding out later that they had not been. In the end there were 200,000 people who were not able to get the tickets that they wanted. This is different to the predictions, which assumed that most people would get what they wanted and only exceptional cases would miss out.
Eighteen of the twenty four sports on offer sold out before the Friday evening and then two more were sold out on Saturday. There were just football, volleyball and wrestling tickets available on Sunday. The result of the second ticket offering means that 130,000 more people now have games tickets. There will also be contingency seats available next year and so there will still be a chance for people to get some. These will go on sale in December and they will also be available to those people who secured tickets in the first round of ticket sales, who were excluded from being able to buy tickets in this round. The tickets were made available to the whole of Europe and there was criticism over the amount that were sold to European applicants which was about 5%.
