LONDON VAUXHALL DEALERS

London 2012 organisers have sold more than two-thirds of the remaining tickets that were put on general sale this week, with many sports sold out.

Of the 928,000 tickets first put on sale this month around 640,000 have been sold. That leaves around 300,000 still to be sold, plus a further 150,000 to 200,000 that will come back on to the market as seating configurations are finalised.

In addition to those sports that had sold out before the general sales window opened, the 70,000 general access tickets to the Olympic Park have also gone, as have race walk, mountain biking, trampoline and shooting.

Organisers said there was still good availability in volleyball, football, taekwondo, handball, basketball, boxing, beach volleyball, canoe sprint, table tennis and hockey. However, most of the remaining tickets are at high-price points.

Paralympic sales were also described as encouraging, with a further 125,000 tickets sold this week, taking the overall total to 1.2m. In all, there are 8.8m tickets available for the Olympics and 2m for the Paralympics.

While the figures suggest that 25 of the 26 Olympic sports will sell out, allowing Locog to hit its £650m revenue target with ease, organisers face an uphill battle to sell the remaining 1.3m football tickets.

Locog will also put tickets for the main climb in the cycling road race and the cycling time trial at Hampton Court on sale next week at £15. The move has proved controversial with cycling fans used to watching the action from the side of the road for nothing.

On the same day, 29 May, general access tickets to the tennis tournament at Wimbledon – allowing access to Henman Hill and the outside courts but not the show courts – will also be made available.

London 2012 organisers – who warned earlier this week that users would face waits of half an hour on the site at peak times but said that it had remained operational throughout – this week defended their record on ticketing, insisting that they have managed to balance fairness with revenue raising.

"Do I think we have delivered the fairest possible system? I absolutely do. We got it about as right as we could. We wanted to hit our revenue targets, we wanted full stadiums and we wanted to treat everyone as equally as we could," said Locog's deputy chairman, Sir Keith Mills.

The changing rules of digital games and marketing will be laid bare at November’s London Games Conference.

Returning for its fourth year, the popular conference and networking event will again examine emerging trends in digital games.

LGC 2012 is run by Intent Media, publisher of MCV and Develop. 

The first 100 tickets are available at an early bird cost of £199. To attend, contact Hannah.Short@intentmedia.co.uk or call 01992 535 646.

The four-hour conference format returns, this time with extra presentation options during the after-event networking dinner for attendees.

For details on partner packages and sponsorship opportunities, contact Lesley.Blumson@intentmedia.co.uk or call 01992 535 646.

A call for speakers has also opened today – contact Michael.French@intentmedia.co.uk for more details. 

Previous speakers have included influential execs from the global games business including Mike Mauler (GameStop), Heiko Hubertz (BigPoint), David DeMartini (EA), John Clark (Sega), plus representatives of trend-setting digital games firms like PopCap, Jagex, Ngmoco and Miniclip.

Last year’s audience-voting mechanic will also be part of proceedings. 

“LGC has established itself as the most incisive event looking at the changing digital games business,” said Michael French, editor-in-chief of MCV and Develop.

“This year the event will focus on distribution platforms shaping the industry such as Steam and iTunes, plus how brands use social media, with best practice advice for Twitter, Facebook and YouTube.”