London Olympics 2012: Giving Away 125,000 Tickets for Free, is it Possible?
The initiative on part of Boris Johnson, the Mayor of London, to giveaway 125,000 tickets to London Olympics 2012 for free to the London schoolchildren is rather commendable. However, the much needed funds required to do so are missing and the London administration
has been vigorously involved to raise private cash to pay for it.
In order to implement his plan, Mr. Johnson needs to request 2 million pounds from the private sector for buying extra 75,000 tickets. It is worth mentioning over here that being Mayor of the city he would be entitled to have 50,000 tickets for free from
the organizing committee for the kids programme.
Last week, in this regards, the mayor eventually got a chance to strike a deal with a leading London based business company; however the negotiations eventually broke down as the mayor was, reportedly, asking for too much of money. So, for the moment, it
is like the taxpayers of London council would be paying for the tickets.
It is expected that after providing 125,000 tickets for free to the school children, one out of eight children would get a chance to have its hands on the free ticket. To qualify for achieving the free ticket, the children have to achieve an assigned goal
at school as part of the 2012 Get set programme.
In order to persuade the private sector to pay for the free tickets to be given to the schoolchildren, the mayor of London has some serious hurdles to overcome. As a matter of fact, any sponsor would want its publicity for the scheme which is less likely
to go down well with the official sponsors of the event. By paying for the tickets for the children, the sponsor or rather the backer would look like the official sponsor when in reality it won’t be.
In order to cope up with the situation, there have been suggestions to copy the 2008 Beijing Olympics model. Stuck with somewhat similar situation, China had requested its businessmen living abroad to provide funds for the large and formidable Aquatics centre.
Instead of dwelling upon the backers from London, if the mayor would requests a few hundred organizations across the UK to pay towards the project, he is more likely to raise the required funds soon and that is too without any major hurdle. After all, there
would be numerous individuals and organizations who would like to back a project aimed at providing quality entertainment to the children.
Requesting the individuals or other small organizations would have many advantages; first, the mayor would not have to offer them huge publicity against their contribution, instead, a little recognition would be fine for them. Moreover, the individual contributors
would not even ask for that little acknowledgement. This way the mayor would easily avoid offending the official sponsors of the event. However, if the idea, amid some reason, is excluded, the London council taxpayers would surely have to come forward for
making the due contribution.
Discussing the situation, an interesting and quite practical point was raised by a citizen who suggested the mayor to approach the wealthiest of the sports stars dwelling in London and to ask them for making the donation and to get involved in the act of
inspiring the nation. He said that there were numerous footballers and tennis stars dwelling in the city which literally earned in millions; making donations of few hundred thousand pounds would not at all be difficult for any of them.
Another citizen suggested that the mayor should approach the official sponsors of the event and should request them to contribute for buying tickets for the children. This would not only provide a boost to their marketing campaigns, but would also extend
them the chance to participate into the humanitarian act of giving the first hand experience to the next generations to get inspired by the sports stars. If the mayor would approach the official sponsors with proper homework, it would not be difficult to make
them pour some extra money out of their wallets.
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