Fans "struggled to get hold of the latest round of Commonwealth Games tickets" which went on sale Monday as organizers "failed to cope with 'unprecedented demand,'" according to Craig Brown of the SCOTSMAN. Glasgow 2014 officials "apologised for delays and difficulties as fans rushed to get hold of 100,000 tickets for all 17 sports and both the opening and closing ceremonies." CEO David Grevemberg said, "We let a lot of people down which we are very sorry for. It's not just in keeping with the experience we are trying to create with Gasgow 2014. To put it simply, the system just did not cope." Some would-be buyers reporting "having to wait up to five hours online or over the phone to get hold of a ticket." The latest round of tickets became available after venue layouts and spectator seating arrangements "were finalised." About 2.3 million applications "were made for the initial million tickets released last year" (SCOTSMAN, 5/13). The BBC reported Glasgow 2014 said that tickets "were still on sale but the website was experiencing 'some recurrence of issues.'" The latest statement from the Games' organizer said, "As traffic has increased, we have seen some recurrence of issues people were having with the ticketing website." By lunchtime Tuesday, tickets for diving, swimming, mountain biking, track cycling and the triathlon "had all sold out'' (BBC, 5/13). In London, Ben Riley-Smith reported some social media users "described waiting hours in online queues for tickets only for the web page to crash, forcing them to reapply from scratch." Others who phoned in to buy tickets said that "promised return calls from Commonwealth Games staff never materialised." One ticket seeker wrote on Twitter, "Never seen anything as horrendous as this Commonwealth Games ticketing system. After five hours in the queue, it broke and I'm back to the end!" (TELEGRAPH, 5/13).
