Government buys £750,000 of Olympic tickets

The Government has spent nearly £750,000 on 8,815 tickets for the London 2012 Olympics.

The Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) has been allocated 213 tickets for the opening ceremony, which cost £194,525, and 41 top-priced tickets for the opening ceremony, at £2,012.12 each. It has paid £71,490 for 143 tickets for the closing ceremony, according to figures revealed under a freedom of information request by Sky News. Almost two-thirds of the 1.9 million people who applied in the six-week first round of ticket sales ended up empty-handed.

A total of 1.2 million people received no tickets, with only 700,000 – 36 per cent – successful. The DCMS submitted bids for tickets for the entire Government and, it is believed, its allocation will be shared out across all departments. Apart from £29,530 spent on tickets for the diving event, which will feature Tom Daley, 224 tickets have been bought for track cycling at the Olympic Park velodrome. These include the much sought-after sprint and keirin finals, in which the Olympic champions, Sir Chris Hoy and Victoria Pendleton, hope to compete.