Hundreds of seats went empty at the beginning of the London 2012 Olympics and fueled tickets entrusted to foreign delegations being sold in the black market.

The Olympics saw empty rows for the second day in a row and saw the touts cashing in on the opportunity to sell the tickets sent overseas by the Games organisers. Touts started selling tickets openly on the streets of Britain and were arrested thereafter. Although organisers Locog have begun an investigation into the ticketing fiasco, London 2012 chairman Lord Coe revealed that students and teachers were being called in at the last minute.

The Scotland Yard arrested every illegal ticket seller in Britain while another couple of touts were arrested in Germany and Slovakia. The ticketing fiasco has raised doubts on the ticket sales especially after millions of British fans have been left watching the grand sporting event on television after failing to secure tickets in last year’s ballot.

The organisers have tried to cover up the fiasco by arguing that the empty seats were not allocated to sponsors, but were unused by media, athletes and officials. Military troops, who have been brought in for security purposes along with teachers and students have been asked to fill up the empty seats to avoid any further embarrassment.

Lord Coe even went ahead and dismissed the empty seats as ‘holiday snaps.’ Coe said, “We take it seriously. I don’t want to see swathes of those seats empty and that’s why we will make sure, where we can, people are in those seats when they are not used. The London 2012 chairman added: ‘Let’s put this in perspective. Those venues are stuffed to the gunwales. The public are in there.”

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