The London Olympics 2012 is a once-in-a-lifetime event. So why, asks Mark Perryman, have so few of us got tickets?

With the Jubilee over and the England football team unlikely to provide much of a lasting distraction at the Euros, the 50-day countdown to the London Olympics is now entering serious overdrive.

Right from the start of the bidding competition back in 2005, hosting a ‘home’ Olympics was sold to the British public as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. This was no idle boast: Along with football’s World Cup (which England can’t even think of hosting till at least 2026) the Olympics is undoubtedly the biggest show on earth. Spread across 26 different sports and with over 200 countries competing, its reach and appeal is enormous.

The sales pitch of the Olympic organisers was explicit: This was an opportunity to be there while history was being made, to witness something unforgettable first-hand, to bring the memories of past Games watched on TV to vivid life. The Games organisers did little or nothing to dampen expectation that tickets for the Games would there for the taking.

Seasoned sports observers treated such inducements with skepticism. They knew from past experience that demand for tickets would inevitably massively outstrip supply. Huge numbers of tickets would be reserved for sponsors and special guests, especially for the major events, and unavailable to the public. Despite pressure, the organisers have refused to release details until after the Games concerning how many tickets have been reserved in this fashion.

The organisers have sold the Games short by offering enormous quantities of tickets as part of sponsorship packages. Sponsors are involved in the Games primarily to promote their products – a reduction in the ticket concessions available would be unlikely to put them off. And those turning away would quickly be replaced by others queuing up for the commercial opportunities the Games present.

But making more of sponsors’ seats available to the public is only a start. A core organising principle of the Olympics should have been the direct involvement of the maximum number of people. With a Games comprising 26 different sports there are lots of possibilities for imaginative alternatives to the highly-centralized model that has been adopted.
Take hockey for example: Instead of being played as a mini-World Cup in a single stadium with a 15,000 capacity inside the Olympic Park, hockey could have been played across the West MIdlands. Stadiums there include two in Birmingham, one each in Wolverhampton, Coventry and Sandwell – all considerably larger than the specially built one in Stratford. The team GB squad could have been based in the area, combining their training and preparation with outreach work in schools and communities to promote the sport. A local opening ceremony for all the nations taking part would have helped to cement civic pride in hosting this part of the Olympics.
Or consider boxing. Manchester would have been an excellent host for this sport. The biggest crowd for Ricky Hatton’s fights was at Manchester City’s Etihad Stadium when over 40,000 people turned up, many more than those who will get tickets to the Olympic boxing finals. Manchester could have combined the Etihad Stadium with Old Trafford, capacity 75,000, and the MEN arena too for the earlier rounds.

Volleyball? Yorkshire boasts large stadia in Leeds, two in Sheffield, Bradford, Huddersfield, Hul,. and Doncaster. A regional host for this sport makes good sense and would increase the numbers who can watch. With a modest degree of reconfiguration and specially designed surfaces to lay on top of football pitches, the possibility for making a reality of an entirely different model for the Olympics is clearly evident.

Of course there will always be some events for which no stadia would be large enough to accommodate. But the spread of the programme should allow anyone who wants to come along to see at least some part of the Games. Sports such as rowing, taekwondo and swimming would, in this way, be put on the map in place of the usual roster of cricket, rugby and football.

Football is the one part of the Olympics programme which has been organised in the fashion I’m suggesting. But it hasn’t attracted the demand of tickets the organizers hoped for. I believe there are two reasons for this: Firstly, in Britain, the football tournament is regarded as not even third or fourth rate compared to the World Cup or European Championships. Secondly, people have been rightly indignant that the regionalization of the tournament is little more than a sop to Scotland, Wales and the north, the one bit of the Games they can have. Giving the tournament a regional base, in the way that the North West was used for the 2005 Women’s European Football Championships, would have been more likely to create a popular connection to Olympic football.

So why the lack of ambition? Because the Games organisers have preferred a centralized, elitist model that combines relatively small venues and high ticket prices escalating steeply from a minimum of £20. The alternative arrangement, with the Games spread across the country, would have vastly increased spectator capacity and allowed for ticket prices that are substantially lower..

Does any of this matter? Yes, because any democratic project for sport should mean the involvement of as many people as possible. London 2012 actively prevents this. Instead of a People’s Games in which we can all be involved, it’s tickets for the lucky few, and the TV remote for the rest of us.

Mark Perryman is the author of Why The Olympics aren’t Good For Us, And How They Can Be, available at a 15% pre-publication discount from www.orbooks.com/catalog/olympics/

According to the organizers, encouraging participation in sport is one of the main benefits of the London 2012 Olympics. Mark Perryman examines the evidence.

The Olympic motto “The most important thing is not winning but taking part” represents some of the finest ideals not only of Olympism but of any sporting event aspiring to be democratic, participative and accessible. After this weekend’s Jubilee hoopla fades away, the coming summer of sport – Euro 2012, a serious British challenger to win the Tour de France, Wimbledon fortnight, overseas rugby tours to the southern hemisphere, a domestic test match series and the first, and last, home Olympics for most of our lifetimes – will no doubt test such sentiments to the full. A nation that invented many of the world’s team sports has, perhaps forgivably, some difficulty in coping with repeated defeats by the nations to which it exported them. Add in a lengthy martial and imperial tradition, and CLR James’ famous maxim ‘What do they know of cricket who only cricket know’ can be seen as essential to understanding why the British are not the world’s best losers.

Now well into its second week the Olympic Torch Relay would seem, at first sight, to represent all that is good about sport. Crisscrossing the country, coming soon to a city, town, or village near you, it appears to epitomize what ‘taking part’ should be all about. But looked at more closely, it reveals the flimsy populism and chronic lack of ambition that London 2012 has come to symbolise. The Relay has undoubtedly proved popular; any event with this scale of media coverage was likely to attract large, inquisitive crowds. And the passion of those turning up is evidently genuine. But how is that energy connected to participation in the Games beyond waving a flag, cheering from the kerbside, and providing a backdrop to the celebrity torchbearers and sponsors’ branding? What opportunities does the Relay really present for taking part?

A Torch Relay for all would have made popular participation its organising principle. For each 10k leg, the roads and pathways could have been closed for the torchbearer to be followed by fun runners and active walkers, in the style of the London Marathon or Great North Run. This could have been the biggest venture ever in participative sport. But such opportunities have been spurned because they might detract from the all-important messages of sponsors. Villages, towns, localities within a city, each could have been given their stretch of the route for thousands to run or walk along. Other legs could have been given over to cyclists, canoeists, ramblers and fell-runners, sailors and any other mode of human powered, or human steered transport. And why, on most nights, does the Relay stop with the Olympic flame transferred from the evening’s finishing point to tomorrow’s starting line by car? What an experience it would be for club runners and cyclists to venture through the night, taking the torch to every part of the land. In this way many more than the limited numbers now talking part could have been involved

But even with these changes the Relay would still leave most parts of the country with only a fleeting glimpse of the Torch as their solitary direct experience of the Olympics. This reality has been dutifully accepted as fact by almost every media cheerleader for London 2012. It is as if the removal of all critical faculties is a condition of highly-valued journalistic accreditation. An Olympic programme which included a multi-stage cycling Tour of Britain could have covered all parts of the country, and perhaps neighbouring nations too, as a thrilling contest throughout the duration of the Games. And why not hold a Round Britain yacht race visiting the ports of coastal Britain? Add a half marathon and a 10k road race to the running events, a canoe marathon and a multi-stage mountain bike race,and you begin to build a genuinely participatory Olympics, free-to-watch, decentralized, and with routes that are capable of accommodating enormous crowds from the sidelines. In this way we can begin to re-imagine what the Olympics might look like.

Such changes, which would accommodate the widespread appetite of millions who want to take part, will not be easily achieved inside the existing framework of the Games’ organization. Sport, as CLR James also insists, is socially constructed. The late twentieth century popularity of sport as a TV spectacle , fashion statement ,and branding target for sponsor has been accompanied by a headlong decline in participation in organised sporting activity. Those sports that have enjoyed growth have largely been individual ones , a source of recreation rather than competition. The irony of the Olympics is that its current ethos, with an emphasis on the enormous gap between professional top-flight athletes and everyone else, sharply limits the possibility of popular participation. The challenge is to come up with a Games that breaks with this tradition to create a People’s Games in which all can take part.

Mark Perryman is the author of the forthcoming book Why The Olympics Aren’t Good For Us, And How They Can Be – click here to order with a 15% pre-publication discount.

As the Olympic Torch relay starts its route around Britain, author of a forthcoming book on the Olympics Mark Perryman questions the claim of a Games for all.

Beginning its long route around Britain the Torch Relay is one of the few examples of decentralisation and free-to-watch events that could have transformed the 2012 Olympics into a Games for all.

There is little doubt that the sight of the Olympic torch as it passes through a village, town or city up and down the byways, with photo-opps at famous landmarks will ignite popular interest and huge media coverage.

But the scale of that enthusiasm reveals the lack of ambition behind the 2012 model for the Olympics. In my new book Why the Olympics Aren’t Good For Us, And How They Can Be, I propose Five New Rings for the Olympic symbol. The first, and most important, of these is decentralisation. As a mega-event football’s World Cup has its problems too with new stadia sometimes built with no obvious future likelihood to be full again once the tournament is over. But the singular advantage for the hosts of a World Cup over the Olympics is it is spread all over the country, and sometimes more than one. In this way the global spectacular becomes not only a national event but a local event too. The Olympics is an entirely different model, apart from the yachting and the football tournament every single event is London-based, most of Britain will have no contact with the Games except a fleeting fglimpse of the Torch relay as it pases through.

Decentralisation could have changed all this, and saved enormous amounts on new builds too. Glasgow and Edinburgh, Cardiff, Manchester, the North-East, Yorkshire and the Midlands all posses world-class stadia and arenas with huge capacities and multi-use possibilities. North Wales, the Lake District and parts of Scotland have the natural landscape perfect for events including the canoe slalom and mountain biking. Badminton is one of the finest three-day event venues in the world, its not in London so its not being used for 2012.

Avoiding those costly new builds by using existing facilities would not only magnify the Olympics’ local appeal but vastly increase capacities too. With imaginative reconfiguring Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium could have hosted the showjumping, Manchester’s Old Trafford and Eastlands stadiums plus the MEN Arena the boxing, between Glasgow and Edinburgh share the Hockey tournament , the Midlands Stadiums host the Beach volleyball, the North-East already hosts the Great North Run, why not stage the Olympic Marathon there, give Yorkshire the Football tournament and so on.

Decentralisation enables this spread of venues with far bigger capacity than many hosting the events in London. And with Scotland, Wales, regions and cities hosting entire parts of the Olympic programme an effective campaign combining civic pride and participation in the adopted sport could have been mounted.

Decentralisation could also afford an extension of the Olympic programme to include events that are both nation-wide and free to watch. Why not an Olympic Tour of Britain multistage cycling race, and a Round Britain sailing race. The potential for crowds lining the streets and the quaysides to watch , for free, as the Olympics comes to their town or port would have been huge.

The book that I have written is neither anti-Olympics nor it it against sport, I am a fan of both. But I am opposed to what the Olympics have become, the false promises made on their behalf and the chronic lack of ambition in the way they have been organised. My argument is that a different OLympics isn’t only possible, but better. If our only experience of the Games in this much hyped once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to host them is watching them on the TV, well they ,might as well be anywhere else but here, and a lot less costly too.

Mark Perryman’s Why the Olympics Aren’t Good For Us, And How They Can Be is available at a pre-publication 15% discount from www.orbooks.com