Australians have pounced on 3000 extra Olympic tickets released for sale, with many of the prized seats quickly snapped up, even at $915 each.
The cheapest $45 tickets for the August 4 day session of the athletics, which includes heats of the men’s 100m, sold out within an hour of going on sale online on Tuesday.
All seats, including premium $915 tickets, were sold to potentially see Sally Pearson in the 100m hurdles final in the August 7 night session which also includes the men’s 1500m and high jump finals.
But tickets to see some of Australia’s other medal hopes in London were still available – at a price.
The same $915 top tier tickets were left for the men’s long jump final, which should feature Australia’s world silver medallist Mitchell Watt, on the same night as the women’s 100m final and men’s 10,000m final.
Some diving tickets were also still available on Tuesday afternoon, including one $626 ticket for the men’s 10m platform final, in which Matthew Mitcham is defending his gold medal.
There was also one $682 ticket left for the women’s basketball final.
Optimistic fans snapped up the remaining $626 tickets to see Steve Hooker defend his title in the men’s pole vault final, even though the struggling champion needs to qualify for London first.
The handful of new tickets for rowing, hockey and artistic gymnastics all sold quickly, but there were many still available for basketball preliminaries, beach volleyball and some of the less popular sports such as shooting and badminton.
Fewer tickets have so far been made available to Australians for the London Games than for Beijing in 2008 because of high local demand and smaller venues.
The Australian Olympic Committee’s official ticket seller CoSport has not been able to secure close to the 50,000 tickets they have requested from Games organising committee LOCOG, but are hoping more will become available.
“We’re cautiously optimistic we’ll be able to provide even more tickets after this batch,” said CoSport chief executive Mark Lewis.
“The organising committee has been very good in trying to get as many tickets to Australia and other key sporting markets as they can.”
The latest batch of 3000 became available, and more might come onto the market, as some countries return unsold tickets and corporate packages are separated.
More will also be released closer to the Games when temporary venues are built and precise ticketing numbers are known.
CoSport is also hoping to set up an onsite office in London before the Games to sell leftover tickets from the seven countries they represent.
“You can pretty much rest assured if you’re interested in going to the Games and you get to London, you can always find a ticket for something,” Lewis said.
