Visitors walk near the Olympic Stadium at the Olympic Park during the 2012 Summer Olympics. Photo: AP
After days facing criticism for swaths of empty seats at venues, organisers at the London Olympics said that 2.1 million people attended events in the first three full days of competition.
Games organisers said 86 per cent of ticket-holders showed up Saturday, 92 per cent Sunday and 88 per cent Monday.
The gaps have been blamed mostly on officials from sports governing bodies and national Olympic committees not using their allocations of prime seats in plain sight of television cameras and photographers.
Empty seats in privileged spots angered many British people who failed in their applications to get Games tickets in public ballots. A potential solution was offered when the head of Britain's Olympic body called on the IOC to take more responsibility off future hosts.
The International Olympic Committee should invest hundreds of millions of dollars in centralised ticket distribution, British Olympic Association chairman Colin Moynihan said.
"It is so important to the sporting public of the host city, the host country, to get this right that this is now, I hope, recognised by the IOC as something which they should take on," Moynihan said at a news conference.
Ticket sales here are mandated to the London organising committee (LOCOG), which pledged that 75 per cent would reach British residents. A total of 856,000 spectators attended events Saturday, including a "conservative" estimate of 500,000 on the men's cycling road race route.
It was 900,000 on Sunday, when eight men's football matches were played. An estimated 300,000 lined the women's cycling route. Monday's overall attendance was 370,000.
Spokeswoman Jackie Brock-Doyle says organisers would not publish breakdowns of each venue's attendance, which could detail those sports that struggled to lure ticket holders.
The governing body for athletics says expects track and field will "face the same problem in the Olympic Stadium," when events begin Friday.
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