Donald McRae The Guardian, Tuesday 20 July 2010 Article
Organisers of the London Olympics have promised full stadiums for all events and “affordable” ticket prices for the vast majority – but concede that showpieces such as the men’s 100m final will be limited to “people with privileged access”.
Paul Deighton, the former investment banker who is chief executive of Locog, the organising committee, said 75% of the tickets will be in a ballot for the general public, a much higher proportion than for the World Cup finals in football or rugby.
In an interview in today’s Guardian, Deighton said ticketing policies at the games will favour the public before sponsors’ guests and corporate hospitality packages. Full details of pricing structures will not be released until October.
“We’ll have 75% of the total tickets in the ballot for the general public,” Deighton said. "Of the remaining 25%, about 16% will be sold to the international general public through the respective national Olympic committees.
“The remaining 9% gets distributed to corporate hospitality, broadcasters and the International Olympic Committee. So we’re treating people right.”
At the World Cup in South Africa, organisers were left with swathes of empty seats despite claiming the finals were more than 95% sold out. But Deighton acknowledged that the success of the games depends on the atmosphere surrounding each event.
“We want to make sure the venues are full, which sounds an obvious objective. But one of the big disappointments in Beijing [the 2008 Olympics] was that, even though they’d sold all the tickets, the venues were often far from full. That’s a travesty. We’ll do everything we can to keep the stadiums full – and the first way to do that is to place tickets with people who really want to come.”
Deighton’s generosity towards the average sports fan will not extend to the showpiece events in 2012. He said opportunities to see Usain Bolt in the 100m final will remain strictly limited, and that “people with privileged access will be there”. But he argues that “someone like Bolt will be making eight or nine appearances and so there’ll be a big chunk of the general public at different sessions”.
He stressed: "We want to make tickets accessible and affordable – and ensure that there are a lot of them for the public. Of course ‘affordable’ is a moveable feast. But when people see our ticket prices and compare them to other things you buy tickets for in London, and see the range of offers we’ve got at lower-entry events, I think they’ll say, ‘Yeah, that’s all right.’ "
That objective chimes with Deighton’s ambition to make London 2012 the most diverse and democratic of all Olympiads, which includes him suggesting he will avoid selecting “the obvious suspects” when assembling 70,000 volunteers who will welcome overseas athletes, spectators and dignitaries to the London games.
“I’m not saying I’m going to reject the people who are great at doing it – but we don’t want just the obvious suspects. We’re very conscious that in the five [Olympic] boroughs, there is the most ethnically diverse and extraordinary community out there. We have to be proactive in finding ways to make sure that they are included. A Bangladeshi housewife is not naturally going to sign up.” Asked how he might sidestep the white middle classes, in favour of finding his designated “Bangladeshi housewife”, Deighton said: "By working in the communities and by actively going out and meeting groups and saying ‘Do you realise what you could do here?’ You target them and you pull them in. It’s the same way we’ve got them to work here [at Locog].
"I am relentless in saying this workforce has to look like London. I tell the guys responsible [for Locog’s recruitment], ‘We’ve got these schemes to hire black people and we’re at 18%. With the next 50 [employees] do we go to 19% or down to 17%? Is it dilutive or accretive?’
“They know it had better be accretive or someone isn’t trying hard enough. With this project you can make a difference if you’re tough enough, and you just bang it in to everybody’s head each step of the way. We’re hiring like that now.”