I see your point, but do the sums if you are a low paid lover of track athletics from Malawi or Indonesia for instance and would like to attend every day. In principle everybody should have an equal chance just as those who compete should. It is just the extremity of the difference between intent and outcome plus the political shennanigans that kill the occasion and somehow it has that awful feeling about it of something that is going to kill itself off in a few decades - I shall not be here by then so I will not express an opinion on the actual demise.
@Terry Williams wow that sounds good, what did you do? I was a recycling manager at Glastonbury for 12 years, amonst others. I'd love to have gotten my grubby mitts on the olympic dustbins .chuckle
Have a look at this Brian http://www.tickets.london2012.com/olyticketprice3.html#s46. These are the official prices and they start at £20. The really expensive tickets are for the opening and closing ceremonies -- £2000 top whack -- and the final of the 100 metres at the athletics which can go up to £725 by the looks of it, probably for a seat right on the finishing line. Depends what the £800 ticket is for but I suspect someone's making a profit although you're only allowed to resell tickets through the official Games organisation. I quote: "If you are no longer able to use the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games tickets you have purchased from London 2012, you can submit them for resale through the official London 2012 ticket resale programme from spring 2012. Tickets are strictly non-transferable and must not be sold or advertised for sale on the internet, in newspapers or anywhere else other than via the official London 2012 ticket resale programme." But that never stopped anyone. The big rip-off comes when you find you can only use a VISA card -- no Amex, Diners etc -- to buy tickets because VISA is a Games sponsor. The ticket site offers a helpful link to VISA so you can get a card... I believe you're also not allowed to take anything to drink into the stadium unless it's a product of a sponsor.
I could go on and probably will later as I am lucky enough to have been to every summer and winter olympics from 1972 to 1988. And I was paid to go!
The tickets we saw wern't even for a whole day, they were split into morning evening and afternoon!!!!!!
The Olympic Games are also supposed to be about individuals competing against each other in their discipline on behalf of their country and should be unpolitical, uncontroversial, accessible to all and lots of positive things. Now we have diplomats and national politicians stamping their feet like impetuous children and top athletes excluded because they are 'controversial' or whatever. Then go to the stadium and be locked in all day and spend well over a tenner on a Mac with chips, a strange apple thing and a coke. Accessible to all eh? The price of tickets is more than the worst off get on the social in an entire year.
Even the paralympics has been made into big business, like the example of various wheelchair manufacturers showing poor African athletes they have donated a chair to. Altruism, my foot, they're gonna look good and get customers out of it.
The principle is brilliant all round; the Olympics, paralympics, youth olympics and winter olympics but it has turned into a massive profiteering exercise and naturally governments love it. Lots of extra tourists, spending money and they get their cut out of all the taxes paid on eveything. That all makes their supporting funding look like small change.
I think it got lost somewhere and can never find its way back. Sad.