Wednesday, 7 March 2012

Seb Coe Denies Secrecy Obsession


London 2012 chairman Seb Coe has denied being "obsessed with secrecy" over the controversial issue of Olympic tickets.

In an intense question-and-answer sitting at the London Assembly, Lord Coe was accused of running the organising body like a closed "oligarchy".

The session's climax was transparency over a breakdown of tickets in terms of price and events, so a statistical analysis could be made on whether London 2012 was keeping its promises to make seats affordable.

Chair of the Assembly's economy, sport and culture committee, Dee Doocey, told Lord Coe "you are obsessed with secrecy."

Ms Doocey also claimed that a statistical analysis and breakdown which "should be available at the hit of a button" had been avoided by using data protection and client confidentiality.
Transparent

Lord Coe said: "I am not going to divert the attention of my team who still have four million tickets and revenue targets to meet because that is how we fund the Games. I am not going to take them off that focus to work on every single client group for every single session.

"We are talking about 1,000 sessions.

"I am sorry but we are being entirely transparent here.

"We are determined to get through this ticket process in the way we have outlined to you."

London 2012 made it clear that 75% of tickets would be in the hands of the British public, encompassing their pledge regarding fairness and affordability of tickets.

"We will meet that target," according to Lord Coe.

The organising committee also promised that two-thirds of tickets would be £50 or less and there would be "proportionate numbers" of tickets at each and every price point.

Lord Coe argued however, that to give numbers on a "permanently moving landscape" of still to be fixed venue layouts and seating plans, including space-consuming camera angles for the media, would throw up "misleading" and quickly out-dated figures.

London 2012 has so far sold seven million Olympic and Paralympic tickets to the public with four million left, another million Olympic tickets will go on sale in April.

London 2012 confirmed that the full information would be given after all the figures were in.

Ms Doocey replied: "I am sorry I am not convinced at all.

"There is nothing at all to stop you from publishing it if you have got nothing to hide.

"You are not transparent.

"You are the least transparent organisation I have ever come across in the eight years I have been on at the London Assembly."

London 2012 chief executive Paul Deighton said: "We will deliver 2.5 million tickets at £20 or under.

"We are on the way to doing that.

"We have delivered all our (discounted) Pay Your Age and free Ticketshare tickets and all accessibility commitments. They are all on the way.

"I can absolutely confirm that when we are done on this, we have five price points and each of them will have about 20% of the tickets.

"The range will probably be between 18-22% because of the shapes of the venues.

"We have not indulged in what the airlines would call yield management.

"We know the demand has been incredible.

"We could, based on demand, push up the price of the tickets that are left and they would be bought.

"We are not doing that.

"When we have all the numbers because we have sold all the tickets you will see that where there are five price bands, they are about 20% each.

"Where there are four price bands, they are about 25% each.

"We cannot prove that to you now because we have not sold the rest but that is the way the programme will unravel."

Deighton suggested that 25% of the non-British public who may buy tickets tend to pick from the higher prices.

"I will guarantee that if you do a statistical analysis of where we end up, the bias will be towards the cheaper end.

"We are fully online to deliver at our price commitments and beyond," Mr Deighton said.

Lord Coe said: "We do not have problems. In the history of sporting tickets there has never been that level of individual demand for any ticket."

London 2012's target is to have full venues, unlike other Olympic Games, and affordable prices, as well as to raise £2 billion from the private sector.

Lord Coe said: "On every one of those commitments that we have laid out at the beginning of this ticket process, we will meet. We will show that with a comprehensive breakdown at the end of this process.

"We were also very clear that we would not provide inaccurate, misleading or incomplete data as we went through it. You will get that at the end of this process. You have my word on that.