Slow 2012 Olympic football ticket sales in Glasgow - How can Hampden be a sell out?
Last week it emerged that around three-quarters of the tickets for the Olympic football matches taking place at Hampden remained unsold, with only a month-and-a-half left to sell the remaining 150,000 tickets.
From 25 July, Glasgow will host a number of Olympic Football matches as part of the London 2012 Olympics, but ticket sales suggest that the Scots have yet to get fully behind the events themselves. Glasgow’s Council Leader Gordon Matheson has claimed that Glaswegians were ‘excited’ by the prospect of the Games coming to the city, and vowed that the stadium would be a sell-out for each of the matches.
Those matches include Woman’s Olympic teams such as USA, France, Columbia and Korea, and from the Men’s competition, Honduras, Spain, Japan, Egypt, Morocco and Belarus will all play preliminary rounds at Hampden.
But why the lack of uptake in tickets, priced at around £20 each for two games of football?
“LOCOG hasn’t done well trying to market the Olympics to the Scottish public,” claims Gene Munro, founder of marketing agency Neo Marketing. “Firstly, the public understandably view the London 2012 as an English event. There have been a few murmurs of these being Britain’s games, but with three men’s and five women’s football games featuring at Hampden, and the remainder of out-of-England games taking place at Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, only a three hour drive from London, it’s clear that the games in Scotland are a token gesture.”
Token or not, the opportunity for Scots to witness a one-off event within their lifetime is still surely an attractive proposition, not least that it features its national sport.
The promotion of the events taking place in Glasgow has been somewhat muted, says Lawrence Broadie, account director at sports marketing agency Merchant Soul, and understandably so, as Hampden has had a busy schedule in recent weeks, having not long held the Scottish Cup final there.
“It’s going to be difficult to find space to promote Egypt against Belarus while you’ve got all sorts of other games and different fixtures reaching their climax,” adds Broadie of Hampden's promotion push.
“I don’t think it’s a lost cause yet however," he continues. "Scottish football fans do tend to buy tickets or turn up pretty late for the game. What you’ll probably find is that interest will grow as you get closer towards the fixtures themselves,” Broadie continues, claiming that it is part of the Scottish game to buy tickets at the last minute for a game, an offer that could well be introduced at Hampden if needed.
As for the marketing of the games, activity has only just begun to roll out. Last week, Glasgow City Marketing Bureau unveiled a large steel structure in the shape of the Olympic Rings within the city centre, while rolling out signage near to Hampden Park itself. Adverts promoting the games have also been placed on the sides of buses too, with the backing of the Bank of Scotland.
However, Munro questions why other formats, such as pitchside advertising during Scottish Premier League matches wasn’t introduced but offers other suggestions as to how the footballing family in Scotland could help drive awareness and interest in the matched.
“If LOCOG and either Glasgow City Council or Edinburgh City Council had been able to get together to convince a few of the teams playing at Hampden to also be based in Scotland for their pre-games training camp, they would surely have seen have seen a better uptake of tickets.
“The Scotland-based teams could have played a friendly against a few SPL teams, do a few training sessions with youth teams, made School appearances, and generally just been seen around town.”
Broadie believes that a local marketing firm should have been brought in to work on building enthusiasm for the events and to add a local touch, however, he also says that the experience of the games is more important in selling them than the games themselves.
“It’s also about all of the activity that goes around it. It needs to be a real event and a real experience so that the result becomes completely irrelevant and that those who go have a good day out and might come back. With these types of fixtures, where there isn’t the same emotional connection, it has to be about an enjoyable day and a nice way to spend time with friends and family. That has to be communicated.”
With the Olympic Torch now on its way to Glasgow, and just under two months left to promote Olympic Football, there is still time to drive ticket sales. But there’s no question that Matheson’s claim that the stadium will be full will prove to be a very tall order indeed.