Spectators' Charter

Sent this to the Mayor and to the organising committee this morning, spurred on by something I heard on radio - if there's anything you want to add, let me know.

I wanted to share my experiences as a spectator at the Athens games with you, following media reports on how it's going in Beijing, in the hope that you may be able to implement some of them in 2012.

I was at Athens and the problem with following the action was evident then as well. There were still tickets around for events, but not many available for finals. I had booked tickets for a load of sports over
a year before the events!

Anyway, my proposal for solving this in London:

1) Have a daily results sheet available - nothing flash, just a list of all results from the previous day. In Athens they had internet stations around the town where you could check the official website, but these were invariably not working. Nice idea though.

2) Have dedicated viewing areas where people without tickets can go to watch the action. Ideally, this would be in an area outside the venue. Maybe even have a spectators village.

3) Resell the tickets of people leaving the venues, like they do at Wimbledon. It was so frustrating trying to get in to the badminton, watching streams of people leaving while having to beg those arriving for a spare ticket. Very humiliating.

There were shops around the city, not sure how official they were, reselling tickets for events, usually at face value. Why not keep the touts out of the picture by doing it officially.

Keep the prices down - don't try and recover the debt by making us pay! No qualifying event should cost more than £10-20, medal events may cost more, but there should be cheap tickets available. Remember, if the prices are cheap enough, people will go, even to the most obscure sports.

I know I'm going out on a limb here, but endeavour to keep the corporates away, as far as possible - sell to fans first and foremost, for we are the lifeblood of the olympics. Or at least, stipulate that if they don't arrive at the venue within 30 minutes of the start of the session, the tickets will be resold to real fans, thus avoiding the embarassing spectacle of shipping volunteers in, or vast swathes of empty seats. Let's reclaim sport for the real people!

4) Have a grounds ticket for Olympic Park, so people can get in to the area and enjoy the atmosphere - preferably with big screens and a viewing area - you couldn't get in to the complex in Athens without a ticket for an event - not even at close to midnight when we were trying to get in just to be close to the 100m final.

5) Did I mention Big Screens - everywhere!

There you go - if any or all of these were implemented it would make the experience so much more memorable. If you could forward this to someone on the London organising committee I'd be grateful.