Papering the Olympic Stadium

Arguably I've already ranted more than enough here about the London Olympic Games, but as the tickets went on sale today (500 days before the opening ceremony), I'll indulge myself one more time*. Mark Littlewood, of the Institute for Economic Affairs, thinks he should be allowed to tout the tickets for the Games if he wants to. Not sure I agree with that, but I like his introductory comments, published in today's Times:

Lord Coe wants to ensure that the 2012 Olympics are the greatest show on Earth, rather than the greatest scam. The British taxpayer will feel it’s a bit late in the day for such sentiments. We’re already spending more than £9 billion on hosting what basically amounts to a fortnight of people running, jumping and throwing things around in our capital city.

But of course, the chairman of the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games isn’t referring to the egregious waste of public money; he’s underscoring his determination to prevent the little guy from making any sort of a profit out of the 2012 fiasco.

There are 6.6 million tickets available for online purchase (Visa cards only please, which is another point of contention). This seems a very precise number, but remarkably, the Organising Committee (known as LOCOG) is unable to say how many tickets for the showcase events, like the men's 100 metres, will be available to the general public. Presumably the answer to that will depend on how many they can sucker corporate buyers into taking, at extremely fancy prices: according to a report on the BBC this lunchtime, some of the ticket "packages" will set you back a cool £250,000. Try making money out of touting those, Mark Littlewood!

The same BBC report asked 20 companies who habitually entertain clients at big sporting events how many Olympic tickets they were planning to take. The answer: none. The same may well apply to local governments, for whom tickets have thoughtfully been set aside. Eight of the 33 local authorities in the greater London area have already decided not to take their allocation. A councillor from Camden, one of the eight, explained that at a time of crimped budgets, the council had to spend what money it had on frontline services.

LOCOG's "budget" requires it to raise £500 million from ticket sales, and Lord Coe says the aim is to sell every ticket for every event. The latter goal will surely not be met: there can't be much demand to watch marathon swimming, or obscure wrestling diciplines, or the opening rounds of the football competitions (one of a number of sports that probably shouldn't be in the Olympics anyway, though that's not LOCOG's fault). But there's also a clear risk that the overall revenue goal won't be reached either. No doubt the venues will look full for the key events, but even that may well only be achieved through the old theatrical trick of "papering the room" -- literally giving the tickets away to anyone who's prepared to show up. Not that Lord Coe and LOCOG will ever 'fess up to that.

* Just to be clear, I love sports, I enjoy the Olympics and I will no doubt be watching on TV next summer. What I object to is vast amounts of public money being spent on rich people's vanity projects.