LONDON – Half a million tickets for Olympic soccer matches have been withdrawn and stadium capacities reduced due to a lack of take-up, Games organizers said Tuesday. Organizers will reduce capacities across venues by closing tiers of stadiums or whole sections of a ground. Even after the reduction, 250,000 soccer tickets are still available with a further 200,000 set to be put up for sale before the Games begin on July 27. Games chief Seb Coe defended the move and said soccer ticket sales compared favorably with previous Olympics. “They are in reduced size venues of course, we've had to scale down the size of those venues,” Coe told reporters. “We've sold more football tickets than we've sold anything else, we've got 37-38,000 tickets we've sold for Britain ladies vs. New Zealand which I think benchmarks pretty well for instance with the women's FA Cup final this year which was an all-London affair at the Emirates Stadium and they had about 5,000. Tickets are still available for sports including athletics, hockey and beach volleyball, while there are still some seats available in the higher price bands for the opening and closing ceremonies.— Reuters
