Olympic boss puts on brave ticket front

Olympic officials insisted today that they had reached their ticketing target despite huge swathes of empty seats at numerous venues.

But they admitted they had no control over big corporate sponsors who may have bought up large quantities of tickets and distributed them on a complementary basis, only for the recipients not to turn up.

Marton Simitsek, Olympic chief of operations, revealed that 3,285,000 tickets had been sold, eclipsing the 2.7m sold for the Games in Seoul in 1988 and the 3.21m sold in Barcelona in 1992.

He maintained this meant Athens 2004 had reached its budget target of €183m.

He ruled out, however, any notion of handing out complementary tickets to ease television worries that sparsely populated venues might be a turn-off for viewers.

“We have reached our goal,” said Simitsek. “We are going to have 3.5m tickets sold by the end of the Games and this is excellent, especially for a small country which is five times smaller than Korea.”

Simitsek claimed that some sports were 100% full on certain days.

Today, for instance, he maintained that tickets for basketball, women’s football, men’s hockey, shooting, swimming, both morning heats and finals, and volleyball were sold out.

He also insisted the tennis tournament was 86% sold out despite spectators being sprinkled sparsely around the Olympic Centre Court today.

“We are going to go to the last day of the Games selling strong,” said Simitsek.

“We’re very happy. In many sports we have sold 100% of our capacity.

“We have no control over sponsors who can distribute tickets together with their own marketing strategy.

“And we can’t sell two tickets for the same seat. I am sure we will see larger crowds in the final phases.”

Simitsek also insisted any transport problems had been resolved.

In the first three days of the Games, he claimed, Olympic transport ferried 21,194 people, including athletes, officials and media, to 190 destinations.