The deadline to apply for tickets to the London 2012 Summer Olympic Games has passed, but organizers say more tickets will be available in the future.
The initial 11:59 pm deadline was extended by an hour after the website received a last minute surge. London 2012 organizers extended the deadline to 1 a.m. Wednesday.
A London 2012 spokesman said, “some people experienced temporary delay in accessing the Olympic ticketing site following a surge of applications around 10:30 p.m. this evening. This surge has now evened out and the system is working normally. Applications were still being processed during this period”.
Meanwhile organizers say that many tickets, possibly as many as one million, will be released later this year. Most for less popular events including handball, basketball, indoor volleyball, hockey ,and football – an event played on large, premiership grounds with many seats.
Some events, including the athletics finals, swimming, and track cycling, are expected to be considerably oversubscribed and will be allocated on a lottery basis.
The Telegraph reports there are concerns that the secondary round of ticket sales will include discounted seats, in order to fill stadiums and encourage the local people to visit the Games. A London 2012 spokesman said he could not give any cast-iron guarantee that consumers, who have paid full price, will not be penalized by tickets being put on sale at a discount.
Spectators reportedly will know if they have been successful between May 10 and June 10, when the money will be taken out of their accounts, and they won’t find out which particular sessions they have been granted access to until June 24.
Organizers are setting up a resale website which is the only legitimate way people can resell their tickets, but it won’t be operating until next year.
The Telegraph reports that means consumers who end up receiving more tickets than they can actually afford will have to pay interest on their credit cards at least eight months before they can resell their tickets.
