London 2012 Olympics: Ticket Resale on but Public not Allowed to Buy

The troubled resale of tickets to the London 2012 Olympic Games will finally resume after days of technical setbacks on the ticketing website, though only Olympic organisers will initially be able to make purchases.

The London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (Locog) official ticketing site was suspended on 6 January because of technical difficulties as sports fans swarmed the site to buy tickets.

The public will not immediately be able to buy any tickets in the resale, which was intended to provide a secure means of selling unwanted Olympics Games tickets at their full value without recourse to the black market.

Instead Locog will buy up all the tickets from resellers and release them in the next batch of general ticket sales in April.

"We are sorry for any inconvenience caused by the suspension of our ticketing resale platform," said Chris Townsend, Locog's commercial director.

"We made a commitment to our customers to give them a safe, secure and legal way of selling Olympic and Paralympic tickets, which they are no longer able to use."

Locog buying up all the resale tickets is "delivering on that commitment", Townsend added.

Those wishing to resell their tickets back to Locog have until 3 February.