London Mayor Boris Johnson brands Olympics 2012 ticketing process ‘an oddity’ Locog gives itself until 24 June to inform successful applicantsThis article titled “London Olympic organisers defend ‘peculiar’ ticket payment process” was written by Owen Gibson, for The Guardian on Wednesday 18th May 2011 16.51 UTCLondon Olympic organisers including Lord Coe have been forced to defend their ticketing process in the wake of criticism from consumer groups and after the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, called it “peculiar”.Consumer groups including Which? have criticised the fact that money started coming out of applicant’s accounts this week but Locog has given itself until 24 June to inform them which tickets they have received, if any.Coe denied the policy was an attempt to avoid a scenario where customers may cancel their orders if they had only received tickets for less popular events. He argued instead it was an attempt to create the breathing space to solve any problems with payments.“The important thing here is, let’s not be coy or naive about, we want to make sure that people have the funds to be able to do this. We’re talking £500m here, this is not chopped liver,” said Coe. “We want to make sure people have funds available. In the event they don’t, we don’t want to rip up that application on the first day.”Which? has said the ordering process forced people to take “a gamble with their finances”. Johnson told a parliamentary committee that taking payment before emailing successful applicants was “a bit peculiar” and “an administrative oddity”, though he added it was “not the end of the world”.Locog’s head of ticketing, Paul Williamson, said up to 25% of ticket payments may not go through first time due to lost cards, technical problems or because there were insufficient funds, adding an extra layer of complexity to a system that had 6.6 million tickets on sale across 648 sessions at five price points and numerous venues. He said the ticketing process had been well trailed and that he had no regrets about the strategy.“We can’t tell people what tickets they’ve got until we’ve charged their card. We need to make sure it’s a fully paid for order before we inform people. That’s sensible business practice,” said Williamson. “The second reason is the sheer scale of this enterprise. More than 1.8 million applied and more than 20 million tickets were applied for. The sheer scale of it is why it takes time. If we told people the day after their credit card went through, we’d be telling people across three or four weeks. You might be told and your next door neighbour wouldn’t.”He said that by the middle of next week Locog expected to have charged well over half of all payments. The emails to inform applicants whether they were successful will all go out on the same day.“We’re trying to be fair to people. No one is going to be allocated a ticket they haven’t applied for. On average, people have applied for 12 tickets worth a total of £500. People are applying for tickets they’ve chosen,” said Williamson.He also defended the fact that Locog has not informed buyers where they will be sitting, effectively asking them to take on trust that more expensive tickets will have better views.“The higher price points are closer to the action and more central, the lower price points are further away and higher up. That’s quite normal in major events where you’re selling tickets a year beforehand,” said Williamson, drawing comparison with other events such as Wimbledon and the FA Cup final that sold tickets in price bands.In June, anyone who didn’t get any tickets at all will get “first bite at the second chance cherry”, said Williamson, followed by those who didn’t get everything they applied for. All the remaining tickets will go back on general sale in November. guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010Published via the Guardian News Feed plugin for WordPress.Thanks for subscribing to Andy Roberts blogLondon Olympic organisers defend ‘peculiar’ ticket payment processRelated posts:London Olympics organisers appeal to protesters not to disrupt flame routeWill the 2012 Olympics be a sell out?London 2012: Ten best of the web
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London Olympic organisers defend ‘peculiar’ ticket payment process
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May 18 2011, 11:55am | Comments »
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Millions will watch as Boat Race is re-branded as ‘world-class event’
The 157th Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race will be shown in more than 200 countries and it’s one of the top 10 annual events in London
This article titled “Millions will watch as Boat Race is re-branded as ‘world-class event’” was written by Barney Ronay, for The Guardian on Friday 25th March 2011 20.38 UTC In terms of sheer weight of numbers, the biggest attraction of a busy sporting Saturday takes place tomorrow afternoon, not in Cardiff or Colombo, but on a suburban stretch of the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake. The 157th Varsity Boat Race, an event competed for by amateurs at several rungs below world class level, will once again attract six million UK TV viewers, with 250,000 watching from the river bank and a further multitude tuning in via BBC website streaming and TV coverage in over 200 countries. At last week’s weigh-in at City Hall the London mayor Boris Johnson described the student race as “a world-class sporting event that is huge for London”. He seems to be at least half right. Part nostalgia pageant, part emerging talent showcase, the Boat Race has in the last two years made a visible effort to reposition itself as a high-end London heritage event. Selling it has been the lot of Boat Race Ltd, the company responsible for dragging this unique sporting “property” — an unavoidably class-bound two-horse race — into the modern world of high-end revenue raking. “It really is a part of London’s history,” says David Searle, the company’s executive director. “The mayor has been incredibly supportive. He’s there to promote London as a centre of all things and the Boat Race is considered one of the top 10 annual events in London.” Menaced by the loss of its ITV rights deal two years ago, the race has since promoted itself aggressively and is now brought to you by title sponsor Xchanging, plus a slew of commercial partners. Despite all of this Boat Race Ltd maintain the race is still financially under-geared. “Running it is very expensive,” Searle says. “We pay the clubs [Oxford and Cambridge] to turn up and row. That’s very expensive. There’s travel and coaching for teams. We don’t get any money at all from the colleges.” If the Boat Race has perhaps been more energetically sold, paradoxically today’s race is one of the more parochial of recent years. The race is often maligned as a sub-standard event. This is perhaps unfair: with the national squads yet to be formed, and thanks to the unusual intensity of Varsity race training, these are still currently the two finest eights in the country. On the other hand, with London 2012 now officially looming the pool of available talent is at a four yearly low. Currently the priority for potential Olympians is national competition. Hence the unusual absence of jobbing overseas rowers in today’s field; 13 out of the 18 competitors are British with just one American. On the plus side both of today’s eights are unusually well-stocked with young British talent, including six undergraduates whose chief rowing experience has come through their colleges. Cambridge are fancied by many to repeat last year’s triumph. They are the heavier eight, by 13 kilos, and also the more experienced, with four previous rowing Blues. But even in the light blue boat there is a fresh-faced tinge. Cambridge’s Dan Rix-Standing didn’t even try out for the race last year. There is also undergraduate colour: David Nelson, an Australian economics student, likes to hunt crocodiles in his spare time back home in Brisbane. In the Oxford boat the teenage old Etonian Constantine Louloudis is flagged up as one to watch. Dark Blue cox Simon Hislop, a 26-year-old testicular cancer survivor and a campaigner for awareness of the disease provides the most heartening story of a race that, true to its own branding as an annual rite of spring, seems set to take place on an unusually placid River Thames.
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March 25 2011, 4:46pm | Comments »
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Golden rower Tom James forces his way back into Olympic reckoning
http://distributedresearch.net/blog/2011/03/25/rower-tomjames-olympicgames-boatrace
A Welshman Tom James heads the British squad‘s internal rankings for the boat race at the London 2012 Olympic games.
This article titled “Golden rower Tom James forces his way back into Olympic reckoning” was written by Martin Cross, for The Guardian on Wednesday 16th March 2011 15.33 UTC Tom James, one of the men who took a fours gold medal in Beijing, has made a dramatic return to the sport by heading the rankings of the British squad’s internal races, held last weekend. The Welshmen took a year out after Beijing 2008 and missed the 2010 season after an operation for a back injury. But the 27-year-old, who is still intent on forcing his way into the team’s top boat in 2012, surprised with his performance. On this form, it is likely that James could have a major influence on the shape of the British Olympic team. James will now be teamed up with Alex Gregory, a former fours world champion, who also came well in well in the internal series of races. Remarkably, though the two men have not raced together before, they share the same age and birthday. Britain’s chief coach, Jürgen Gröbler, will be hoping that this new combination will have enough synchronicity and dynamism to challenge his top pair of Andrew Triggs-Hodge and Peter Reed – who were told by Gröbler to sit out the trials. But despite being the anchor men of the British squad, since 2004, Triggs-Hodge and Reed – also Olympic champions – have recently suffered 12 straight defeats at the hands of New Zealand’s top pair. Now, Gröbler will hope that the new partnership of James and Gregory may just be the combination, either to beat Triggs-Hodge and Reed or push them hard enough to help them find more speed for the 2011 season. The 38-year-old Greg Searle is also a man in search of more speed. The Barcelona Olympic champion wants a second gold in 2012 but found the pace tough last weekend. While his physiology is still developing well, Searle knows he must be fully focused on delivering a better result in the next crucial trials race, now just four weeks away.
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March 25 2011, 3:37pm | Comments »
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