Games marketing fails to shift football tickets
Olympic chiefs have failed to shift one million tickets for the London 2012 football tournament despite launching a heavyweight marketing drive earlier this year to drum up interest in the event.
London 2012 organisers admitted around one million football tickets have not been bought but these have been split in half by reducing capacity at stadiums. Only venues outside London such as Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium and Old Trafford in Manchester will be affected.
A spokesman for Locog, says that 500,000 football tickets, about a fifth of the total that originally went on sale, would be withdrawn from the market as they could not be given away at this late stage.
Of the remaining half, 350,000 will stay on sale in the 10 days leading up to the Games, while 150,00 tickets will be moved through its Ticket Share scheme. The initiative was set up to provide free tickets to children, servicemen and women and their families.
The decision follows a major marketing campaign from Olympic organisers in May after they were forced to address lacklustre sales. At the time only one-third of tickets to the event, 800,000 out of a total of 2.3m had been sold. It was hoped the campaign would provide a sales fillip for the tournament in the three months leading up to the Opening Ceremony.
Despite not selling out the football tournament, the spokesman said that “we were still able to sell more tickets than any other sport.”
He adds: “The way things will probably work is that we may not use tiers or areas in certain parts of the football venues.
“There are no specific plans to run any follow-up marketing activity. We’ll still tell people the tickets are on sale, but I’m sure that this news itself will market the event in a sense.”
The football event starts later this month (25 July) two days ahead of the Olympic Opening Ceremony.
Additionally, 200,00 tickets are to be made available for other sports.
