• Commonwealth Games

Glasgow 2014 ticket allocation 'random and fair'

Glasgow 2014 received 25 times more requests than the number of tickets that were made available for the cycling at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome © PA Photos

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Glasgow 2014 Commonwealth Games organisers have defended their ticket allocation process after tens of thousands of applicants were left empty-handed.

Between August and September more than 2.3 million requests were made for up to one million tickets. Glasgow 2014 said the draw for tickets was "random and fair".

"Obviously we had many, many more requests than we have had tickets available," said Glasgow 2014 deputy chief executive Ty Speer.

"Of course we appreciate that people are disappointed - we knew that would be the case.

"We did our best to communicate that along the way, about how things were going, to manage expectations, but of course, we know that when people really want to come that if they don't get everything they want there's naturally going to be some disappointment.

"[The process] doesn't recognise whether someone has been successful in an application for an athletics event on the one hand or a badminton event in the other," he continued.

"We have said from the very start that we think when sessions are oversubscribed the most important thing we can to do be fair is to run a random, fair draw process and we've done that session by session.

"We didn't want to favour those that applied for more tickets or those that applied for fewer tickets. We wanted to treat everyone exactly the same."

Ticket confirmation was sent out to applicants on Monday, with Glasgow 2014 revealing cycling - which will be held at the Sir Chris Hoy Velodrome - received 25 times more requests than the number of tickets available. More than 100,000 applications were made for the men's 100m final at Hampden Park.

Unsuccessful applicants will be given first refusal on any tickets which remain available.

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