LOCOG officials yesterday “admitted they were unable to start selling” the 1.5 million remaining tickets for the men's and women's soccer tournaments because they are “still testing the online systems that have previously caused technical problems,” according to Owen Gibson of the GUARDIAN. LOCOG Chair Sebastian Coe also “refused to rule out giving away tickets to Olympic football matches if they fail to sell out.” The testing of the Ticketmaster system “is ongoing because of a determination to ensure that technical glitches that have plagued earlier rounds are not repeated.” Coe said, "We're not talking about a delay of months. We'll be able to announce this in the next week, with an early May sale. We're still testing all our systems.” Gibson notes LOCOG has “long accepted that football, in particular the women's tournament, will be its biggest challenge in terms of ticket sales.” Almost 1 million tickets “have been sold” but there are around 1.5 million remaining. Coe said, "I never sat there expecting to sell out every stadium for every game but I think we'll go a long, long way. We've already sold more tickets for football than any other sport. Whether we get to entirely full venues I don't know." Coe continued, "We've got a good chance of selling a whole batch more tickets. We will of course judge it as we get there. There is no plan at the moment to start filling those stadiums, because I don't think we'll need to" (GUARDIAN, 4/25). Coe said, “I am not going to hurry the process artificially just because I need to meet some deadline. I don’t have a deadline, and when the tickets go on sale there has to be the right client experience and my teams have to be absolutely sure that they will deliver” (London TELEGRAPH, 4/25).
CALLING ALL FANS: In London, Ashling O’Connor notes the first event of the Olympics is the Great Britain women’s football team against New Zealand on July 25 at Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales. With only 15,000 tickets “sold to date, a sell-out looks fanciful,” despite a source “describing a full house of 80,000 at the inaugural event of London 2012 as ‘non-negotiable’ if Britain is to live up to its reputation as a sports-mad nation.” However, the women’s team group fixture against Brazil at Wembley Stadium on July 31 “should sell out” (LONDON TIMES, 4/25).
