Olympic football matches fail to excite fans as 1m tickets remain unsold

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The take-up for the Olympic football tournament has been so negative that half a million tickets are to be withdrawn from sale. Organisers admitted that with only a week before the start of the Games many matches outside London will have empty seats. Tickets at Cardiff and Glasgow have been particularly difficult to sell.

The surprise announcement came only one day after the captain of the men’s team, Ryan Giggs, enthused about being part of the event and said he hoped there would be lots of supporters. The matches that involve the British team have sold well, however games in the other venues around the country are struggling to attract a crowd.

With a million football tickets left unsold, Locog, the London organising committee, took the decision to halve the number remaining and close off parts of the stadiums. In Cardiff, the 74,500-capacity Millennium Stadium is expected to have its top tier closed for most matches apart from when Britain’s men play Uruguay. Locog still faces a race against time to sell the 450,000 that remain available – around 200,000 of those are returns from National Olympic Committees.

Locog insists it is “delighted” with sales for the football competition, saying that with 1.6 million already sold that is more than at Euro 2012. They also point out sales of women’s matches far outweighs anything previously seen in this country. For Hope Powell’s side’s first game in Cardiff against New Zealand on Wednesday – two days before the opening ceremony – 37,000 fans are expected. The women’s English cup final at the Emirates drew around 5,000 this season.

Sales in Glasgow, which will host eight games at Hampden Park, are believed to have been particularly sluggish, with around 80,000 of the 250,000 originally put on sale gone. Spain against Japan is the pick of the games in Glasgow – Egypt against Belarus is somewhat less attractive. Adult tickets for matches cost between £20 and £40.

It is in Glasgow that the greatest number of tickets – some 50,000 – has been distributed free to schools and youth groups through the Ticketshare scheme. In all, 200,000 tickets across all Olympic sports have been given out in this manner. Ticketshare is funded via sales of hospitality tickets and packages for the Games – so allowing organisers to give them out for free.

Portsmouth’s future looking bleak after another points deduction is announced

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Portsmouth future in the npower League One for the new season isn’t looking too rosy after the Football League took ten points away from them. The club has been facing administration since last February, and they still do not have an owner to represent them. While the team will be allowed to continue to play with the League, they will have to accept a long list of conditions which include more points being deducted from them.

Last season the team was also docked ten points for entering administration a second time which is effectively what kept Portsmouth out of the Championship. The news of the points deduction is another tough blow for Michael Appleton, the Portsmouth manager, as he kicked off his pre-season training this Monday with eight senior players.

It is likely that the majority of these eight will not remain at the club by the time the season actually gets started next month. Hayden Mullins, for example, has already signed up with Birmingham while Luke Varney and David Norris are expected to be sold off to other teams in the next few days. Kanu and Aaron Mokoena are also said to be leaving.

According to rules set by the Football League, whoever purchases the Portsmouth club must agree that only a small portion of the secured debt from the previous club can be used as secured debt under the new company. All creditors must be paid off in full as well unless mutually agreed upon arrangements are put in place.

Pompey is also going to have to deal with a range of restrictions placed on budgets, loan repayments, and future borrowing that will last for at least the next five seasons before the Football League will allow the Pompey Supporters’ Trust to take over the club.

Damning report about FIFA welcomed by Sepp Blatter

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Sepp Blatter is a man that has made enough bizarre statements to last anyone a lifetime but yesterday, his statement of approval that a Swiss court had a document about FIFA and the bribing situation, was merely incredible. It seems that the president of FIFA was simply happy that after years of pressure everyone was finally able to see just how much greed, corruption, and self-interest has plagued FIFA over the last few years.

The document was simply shocking as well as being damaging to the organisation as it clearly showed that FIFA has not been helping football out at all. Throughout the document were plenty of allegations that were substantial about how FIFA senior members Ricardo Teixeira and Joao Havelange have walked away with more than £14m in bribes over the past eight years from a marketing company that wanted the rights to broadcast the matches.

Vote looming to determine Rangers future in the SFL

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Scottish Football League clubs will soon vote on whether or not the ‘Newco Rangers’ deserve an official place in the Scottish Football League for next season. Charles Green will be waiting anxiously to hear the results of the vote that will take place Friday among reps from 28 of the member clubs. The vote will focus on whether Sevco Scotland Limited should be allowed to join the league and also whether the Ibrox side should be admitted into the First Division.

Several teams that play in the Scottish Football League have already publicly announced that they are against plans to allow Newco to play in the second tier league because they do not believe it is fair. Before the team can get into the SFL setup up a majority of clubs have to vote to allow the team to join. The Friday vote will determine if that majority is met or not.

The placement of Rangers next season could have serious repercussions for the SFL

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Following in the aftermath of Charlie Green’s application for top flight entry being rejected by the clubs in the Scottish Premier League, Regan, the chief executive of the SFL, has made a claim that social unrest would be the result of Rangers fans being deprived of their team.

Regan has said that the only viable solution now for Rangers was to come into the SFL in the first division, as if they played anywhere else it would result in the game as a whole losing around £15.7m in revenue.

He also made it clear that the Scottish Football League couldn’t allow Rangers to start right at the bottom, which effectively means that the SPL clubs are facing the prospect of a breakaway and an SPL2 if the plan for Rangers to join the first division is also rejected.

He added that for big clubs that were at the top of the league, that amount equated to half of their annual distribution, and for clubs at the bottom is would basically wipe out their entire distrbution, and for the even smaller clubs it was a large proportion of their annual turnovers.

Regan went onto say that even if the Ibrox club did go into the first division, there would still be a loss of income to other SPL clubs of £5m, and as the game isn’t self sustaining it would mean a slow and lingering death for football in Scotland. This would then trickle down through the SFL and he considered that from their perspective, being the governing body, they simply can’t allow this to happen.

Regan has also confirmed that a real threat as arisen pertaining to TV contracts and said that they had had conversations with broadcasters and understood what the stakeholders from Sky, Sport 5, ESPN and various other commercial partners of the SPL were likely to do if Ranger were not a part of the top two tiers of the SFL, and it wasn’t pretty.