The London 2012 website received more than 20 million orders for tickets, with around 1.8 million people submitting requests on Tuesday night alone, despite a surge in demand causing the site to crash.
The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) put 6.6 million tickets up for sale to the public with a deadline of midnight on Tuesday. But the organising body was forced to extend the deadline by an hour to 1am on Wednesday after a surge in applications caused the site to falter.
The ticketing process for London 2012 has already come under criticism, as money will be taken from accounts from May 10 but customers will not find out which events they have ‘won’ tickets to until June.
LOCOG said it will now check and deduplicate applications before running ballots across sessions which are oversubscribed and process applications.
Sebastian Coe, LOCOG chairman, said: “Certain events have seen massive demand – for example the Opening Ceremony, which is more than 10 times oversubscribed, so there will understandably be disappointment and we will find a way to go back to those people with other tickets.
“What is most encouraging is that the majority of applications are for multiple tickets and for several sports, which shows that friends and family are planning to go to the Games together.”
Those customers who were not successful in their initial application will be given further opportunities to apply for remaining tickets in June and July as part of this process.
