The organisers of next month’s World Para Athletics Championships in London are urging the public to embrace Paralympic sport again amid fears that many sessions will be less than a third full.
So far 230,000 tickets have been sold – an average of more than 14,000 tickets for the 16 sessions. That is far better than any previous Para Athletics Championships but with the London Stadium holding 56,000 seats, organisers need a late rush of sales to avoid large blocks of empty seats.
Speaking at the launch of the Fill the Stadium campaign, Ed Warner, the co-chair of London 2017, insisted there is still time to capture the public’s attention in the same way the 2012 Paralympics were able to.
“Every time we put more tickets on sale for the IAAF world championships in August they go like hotcakes because people get that it is Usain Bolt’s last run and Mo Farah’s last track race,” he said. “But raising the profile of our Paralympians is more of a challenge because no one has ever paid to go and watch a Para Athletics world championships before. We already have 230,000 people doing that, which is great as typically the event gets just a smattering of people, but the more people we can have in there the happier we will be.”
Organisers have also sold 100,000 tickets to 1,000 schools but are hoping that prices starting at £10 for adults and £5 for children, and a campaign backed by celebrities, politicians and the royal family will raise the event’s profile.
“I don’t want to get to the end of these championships and hear people say: ‘That was fantastic – if only I had known I could go,’” Warner added. “So we want to publicise it as much as we can and give people the chance to embrace disability sport. We are talking elite athletics with people overcoming huge and significant handicaps. At the Paralympics in London in 2012 we all saw how people related to athletes such as Jonnie Peacock and Hannah Cockroft and we are hoping it happens again.”
Warner also believes the event can put a smile on the nation’s face after a number of awful events in the past few months. “The nation needs a fillip as we have been through some terrible times in recent weeks in all sorts of different ways,” he said. “So here’s a chance to be uplifted by seeing extraordinary sport undertaken by extraordinary people – many of them British, many of them winning British medals.”
Warner confirmed that organisers have taken a number of heightened security initiatives following the three terrorist attacks in London this year but said the message he wanted to get across is “to be aware but don’t be afraid”.
“It goes all the way back from messages we had from politicians from all sides when we had the terror attacks to go about your business and not be cowered by this,” he added. “We are working with all the relevant experts, who are fantastic. We are not complacent about it but we have invested a lot of time and effort into security with people who really know what they are doing.”
World Para Athletics Championships, 14-23 July. Buy tickets at tickets.london2017athletics.com
