London 2012: Quarter of a million Olympics tickets unsold

Paralympic crowds enjoyed the action in the Olympic Stadium

About 264,000 tickets for the London Olympics remained unsold, it has been revealed.

The figure, given in a letter from the organising committee, included more than 213,000 unsold football tickets.

In addition to the Olympics tickets, more than 55,000 tickets for the Paralympics remained unsold.

The letter said 11.3 million tickets for 963 Olympic and Paralympic sessions were available and organisers beat their UK ticket sales target.

A total of 10.99 million tickets were sold.

The figures were published in a letter to the London Assembly, which will be able to question London 2012 chairman Lord Coe and Locog chief Lord Deighton at a meeting on Wednesday.

Application process

The unsold Olympics tickets included 2,407 seats for athletics in the stadium, 1,047 for swimming, 2,327 for diving and thousands of day passes for the Olympic Park.

The remainder were made up of other sports, the opening and closing ceremonies and tickets to visit the top of the Orbit tower.

The football matches, which had the bulk of unsold seats, took place at six venues: Wembley Stadium in London, the City of Coventry Stadium, Hampden Park in Glasgow, Cardiff's Millennium Stadium, Old Trafford in Manchester and St James' Park in Newcastle.

For the Paralympics, 3,544 swimming and 668 athletics tickets remained unsold.

Lord Deighton said in his letter: "Right from the outset, Locog set out its commitments and aims of the Olympic and Paralympic ticketing programme which were to raise over £500m towards the cost of staging the Games, fill our venues, and offer affordable and accessible tickets.

"I am delighted to confirm that we have met all these commitments and aims."

His letter confirmed 76.3% of all Olympics and 91% of Paralympic tickets were sold through the UK application process, beating the target of 75%.

He added that 2.5 million Olympic and 2.1 million Paralympic tickets were sold for £20 or less.