London 2012 Olympic ticket pledge made

London 2012 chiefs have insisted that the bulk of the tickets to be made available to the general public next year will end up in the hands of genuine British Olympic fans.

Organisers have kicked off a year's build-up to the tickets going on sale in 2011 by announcing a further 300,000 tickets will be made available for the Olympics and 800,000 more for the Paralympics.

Fans can register their interest now, however, in particular events through www.tickets.london2012.com, and this morning 10,000 people per hour were signing up.

Of the 10 million total tickets, 75 per cent will be sold via a ballot that will be open to anyone living with the European Union - as required by EU law.

London 2012 chief executive Paul Deighton said however he did not expect many takers from the continent as they would be more likely to access tickets from traditional routes through their individual countries' national Olympic committees.

Deighton said: "We expect the vast majority of the tickets in the ballot will stay in the UK, with people abroad going through their national Olympic committees."

He added: "In the highly unlikely circumstance that we are deluged with international applications into the UK ballot we will look at the situation and speak to the IOC and see what steps we can take.

"But this is a hypothetical risk and is unlikely to happen. We would be very, very surprised if we need to do that. We are only marketing to the UK.

"People from abroad can sign up, but this is no different from Brits being able to go to the World Cup in Berlin - it's standard practice and it is not causing us any undue concern."