Zombie Olympics ticket resale site resurrected TODAY

Oh, you want to buy a pass? Wait until April

London 2012 organisers are finally, albeit partially, reanimating their swamped ticket resale website.

The government-owned Locog firm - in charge of bringing the Olympic Games to Blighty's capital later this year - was forced to pull the plug on its ticket system hours after it launched earlier this month. The website briefly allowed punters to offload tickets they no longer wanted, giving others a chance to spectate at the Games.

At the time, the company, which handed Ticketmaster the contract to manage its ticketing system, claimed that "huge demand" had outstripped supply. Passes to the Games were supposed be made available for resale from 6 January until 3 February.

Locog issued a statement soon after the site crash, saying: "We want buying and selling Olympic and Paralympic tickets through Ticketmaster to be a good customer experience, and so we will reopen the site once Ticketmaster have resolved these issues."

Since then the site has been suspended. Now Locog has confirmed, via its Twitter feed, that the system will be made available only to those customers wanting to get rid of unwanted tickets.

"The @London2012 Ticketing website will open for ticketholders who want to sell tickets from 3pm TODAY," it said this morning, in a series of tweets. "Ticket holders who wish to offer their tickets for resale can do so for a 2 week period until 6pm on 3 February."

Locog added that: "All tkts submitted for resale through the site during this period will be purchased directly by LOCOG at face value."

But anyone wishing to purchase tickets won't be able to do so until the spring.

"These tkts will be available to the public from April. We’ll release further info on purchase process in due course," the London 2012 organisers tweeted. That appears to suggest that Ticketmaster could not come up with a workable system that allowed ticket-holders and wannabe Games' spectators to access the site in tandem.

Such exchange websites do of course exist, so it's surprising that Ticketmaster couldn't deliver the goods for Locog. It might also be argued that the London 2012 company is footing the bill for Ticketmaster's mistakes.

Ticketmaster, for its part, has declined to comment on the frankly embarrassing gaffe. ®