Just how many Olympic tickets went to the public?

Data tucked away in the Ticketing Report by London 2012 confirms that the UK public’s ability to buy tickets for more popular events was significantly restricted.

The triathlon, track cycling, and ceremonies topped the table of events where low proportions of tickets sold to the public.

Thousands of other tickets were sold through other avenues. As Sky reports:

“Only 1,668 (39.5%) of the 4,277 seats were sold to the public when Jason Kenny claimed gold in the men’s sprint final with the rest of the seats going to the Olympic family, sponsors and foreign ticket vendors.”

Of those that were available to the UK public, most were highly priced, reports The Telegraph:

Information on total sales and sales to the public by sport is published in an appendix to the report in PDF format, but we’ve had to clean it up to present it below in a way that can be properly analysed.

The data is available as a Google spreadsheet here, and in the table below, ordered by percentage sold to the public (lowest to highest):

In contrast, data (not published here) on sales of tickets to the Paralympic events suggests that corporate sponsors and foreign ticket vendors were less interested in obtaining tickets, with 91% overall being sold to the public, and only wheelchair tennis and rugby falling below 70%.