Top-price ticket for London at £2,012

LONDON (AP):

Ticket prices for the 2012 London Olympics will range from £20 (US$32) for standard events to a symbolic £2,012 (US$3,220) for the top-priced seats at the opening ceremony.

Organisers announced the full range of ticket prices Friday for all 26 sports in an Olympic programme that contains 649 sessions. A total of 8.8 million tickets will be available.

The cheapest ticket for the opening ceremony on July 27, 2012, will be US$32.20, while the most expensive seat for the men's 100-metre final - considered the marquee sports event at the games - will be US$1,160.

Ticket prices begin at US$32 and there will be seats at that level for every sport. Two-thirds of the tickets are priced at US$80 or less and 90 per cent at US$160 or less. Each ticket includes a travel card worth US$12 that will be good for bus and train fare.

Prices will be much higher than they were at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, where tickets ranged from US$3.82 to US$638. Fifty-eight per cent of the seven million tickets on sale in China cost US$12.75 or less.

London tickets will go on sale in March. So far, 1.7 million people in Britain and the European Union have registered their interest. If an event is oversubscribed, they will be entered into a lottery.

Robertson confident

"For probably two-thirds of the sessions, you'll get the tickets you ask for," said Paul Deighton, chief executive of the London organising committee.

Organisers are making 75 percent of the tickets available to the public, while 25 percent are reserved for major sponsors, broadcasters, and Olympic committees and federations.

"I am confident we will have packed stadiums and venues with the range of tickets on offer, meaning that people of all ages and budgets will have the chance to attend London 2012," Olympics minister Hugh Robertson said.

Deighton said prices had been increased for high-demand events to allow for more low-priced tickets for less popular events.

"Most people will say to me, 'You could have sold opening ceremony tickets for more than that, couldn't you?'" Deighton told The Associated Press. "It's one session out of 649, a once-in-a-lifetime ticket.

"And of course being able to sell the high-end ones is what helps us have a third of the tickets at £20 or less. You can't have it both ways. We've had to figure out how to make it accessible at the lower end."

Organisers are trying to raise about US$704 million from ticket sales, a quarter of their operating budget.

"We have three clear principles for our ticketing strategy - tickets need to be affordable and accessible to as many people as possible, tickets are an important revenue stream for us to fund the games, and our ticketing plans have the clear aim of filling our venues to the rafters," said Sebastian Coe, chairman of the organising committee.