21 April 2011, London: As the Olympic ballot
deadline looms, Joe Cohen, the founder and CEO of Seatwave, is
recommending a set of immediate actions for LOCOG to take to ensure
London 2012 tickets are used by the fans that want them, following
a new poll that suggests that fans have not been responding to the
ballot.
The Seatwave poll has indicated a disappointing uptake of
tickets, with 80% of those surveyed saying they had not yet
registered. Cohen asserts that LOCOG's pre-order system has failed
to shift large numbers of the 8.8 million tickets available for the
London 2012 games and the deadline will leave organisers with a
huge volume of tickets to sell.
Following this evidence, Joe Cohen, founder and CEO of Seatwave,
has outlined his recommendations to the Olympic ticketing
organisation which he says will avoid thousands of fans facing
disappointment:
Run an open sale when the ballot system closes that allows fans
an informed choice of available tickets to purchase
Allow people to pay with multiple forms of payment, including
cash sales on the high street
Allow fans to re-sell tickets to friends, neighbours or
relatives without having to use the so-called Locog ticket exchange
service
Joe Cohen, said: "There is a growing risk that millions of
Olympic fans will not get the chance to attend the games and events
they want to. The current ballot system is confusing, unnecessarily
burdensome and the restrictions on ticket resale will mean that
thousands of tickets will go unused. Let's not repeat the
images of blocks of empty seats we saw in Beijing.
"Our recommendations would make the system more transparent and
allow fans the freedom to access tickets they want for the events
they want to attend. A floating-price ticket exchange system would
mean that 100% of the tickets are sold to the people who will
actually use them."
Seatwave is Europe's leading online fan-to-fan ticket
exchange, providing fans with the opportunity to exchange tickets
safely and securely. It has called on LOCOG to introduce a
floating price exchange for London 2012 tickets which would enable
fans to exchange tickets with a clear view of pricing and
availability. This approach was employed at last year's
Vancouver Winter Olympics to great success.
"If LOCOG acts now it can avoid a nightmare scenario of tens of
thousands of empty seats and millions of fans watching the Olympic
games on their televisions rather than being there live. So
many promises have been made about this being the 'peoples' games'
but the early indications are an Olympic programme designed to
benefit organisers and corporate sponsors," added Cohen.