Domestic sponsorship contracts and record revenues from the sale of almost 11 million tickets for the London 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games helped organisers to reach their target of raising £2.4 billion to help cover the costs of staging the events, it was revealed on Tuesday.

The details were released in a written submission by London 2012 organising committee (LOCOG) chief executive Paul Deighton to the London Assembly, who will today question LOCOG and the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC) about the Games and their legacy to the English capital. Deighton’s submission detailed that London 2012’s ‘lifetime’ revenues of £2.4 billion were mainly accounted for by domestic sponsorship of £746 million. This included income from deals with more than 40 companies, including top-tier Olympic partners Adidas, BMW, BP, British Airways, BT, EDF and Lloyds TSB.

Revenue from ticket sales exceeded forecasts at a record £659 million after near sell-outs crowds for both the Olympics and Paralympics. A total of 10.99 million tickets were sold across both events, with Deighton stating that the majority of the 319,000 unsold tickets were for the early stages of the Olympic football competitions. The rest of London 2012’s revenues can be broken down as £609 million from the International Olympic Committee’s contribution; £200 million in other income from sources such as commissions, asset sales and sponsor hospitality; £111 million from the Paralympic grant and £85 million in merchandising and licensing.

“Our core revenues are forecast at £2.4 billion and our core costs are forecast at £2.4 billion,” said Deighton. “Throughout this period we have made clear our aim for LOCOG to break even, and we remain confident that our revenues will meet our costs.” The UK Government’s final quarterly economic report last month stated that London 2012 is set to come in £377 million under the revised budget of £9.298 billion assigned for infrastructure development for the Games. The overall cost of the Games was forecast at £8.921 billion.

In addition, £103 million of contingency is being held to cover the remaining risks in the programme, such as the retrofit of the Olympic Village for legacy use and closing out around 2,000 Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA) and LOCOG contracts. In total, the Government stated that £480 million of uncommitted contingency still remained within the budget.

By Matt Cutler

Source: www.sportbusiness.com