Approximately one million of the 1.7 million available tickets are said to have been sold but ticketing remains a huge concern for the Commonwealth Games Federation (CGF) and Organising Committee.

There have been reports spectators are unable to purchase tickets despite visible clusters of empty seats at venues and tickets and passes being sold on the black market.

The Organising Committee has taken to take drastic action to address the issue by replacing former head of ticketing Sanjeev Mittal with Jolly and simultaneously shifting the ticketing operations out of the Organising Committee headquarters to Ashok Hotel where CGF officials, including President Mike Fennell, are based.

However, Jolly has defended the Organising Committee saying the major problems with ticketing have actually been caused by corporates not turning up rather than spectators boycotting the Games or not being able to purchase tickets.

"Ticket sales were launched in June but India is seen as a late market and Indians buy tickets at the last minute," she said.

"We have done a lot of bulk orders for corporates though and they are big bulk orders.

"Sponsor and contractors get free tickets and they also have a right to buy tickets.

"But they have not turned up.

"The stands that are seen as empty are often these seats.

"People sometimes don’t turn up if they get tickets through promotions."

But Fennell said problems do remain with the distribution of ticketing.

In a bid to fill venues, organisers have now agreed to allow athletes to enter whatever events they want to watch - rather than just their own sports - through their accreditation cards.

Fennell said: "We have received assurances that athletes will be allowed to go to whichever venue they want for whatever event they want to see.

"This would satisfy the athletes’ request which had come to us."

Organising Committee Chairman Suresh Kalmadi however, refused to admit there was a real problem with ticketing, saying all issues had been resolved.

"The crowds are flocking the stadiums," he declared.

"Boxing, wrestling and swimming have been full but we can do better in archery and shooting.

"We have printed 10 per cent extra tickets and we are distributing them free to stakeholders.

"Generally things are in place."

One thing even Kalmadi could not dispute though was the continuing problems with the Games Information System (GIS), which is used by journalists but has not been properly in operation throughout the Games.

"The GIS had a problem because its server was down due to too much traffic,” admitted Kalmadi after Fennell had labelled himself very "unhappy" over problems with the system.

G Rajaraman, consulting director with the Games’ official website, said: "There was corruption of data and the integration of data on the website is also a problem, but the system is working well at the individual venues.

"We have the best in the business to manage the integration of data on the website."

Contact the writer of this story [email protected]


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