Amy Hunt recovered from her typically slow start and blitzed the field to take women’s 100m glory at the European Athletics Championships. The delight on her face shortly after she crossed the line in precisely 11 seconds, and as she did laps of honour around Birmingham’s Alexander Stadium, proved just how much a first senior individual gold medal meant to the 24-year-old.
Add it to the silver medal at last month’s Commonwealth Games, the shock silver over 200m at last year’s World Championship and a slew of relay medals – including Olympic silver in the 4x100m at Paris 2024 – and the University of Cambridge graduate is cementing herself as a star of British athletics.
Hunt has an engaging personality and natural charisma, a willingness to speak her mind on a number of topics and, most importantly, is really, really, really fast, with an ability to deliver on the biggest stage. She is incredibly marketable, and getting the crowds through the door to watch her go head-to-head with fellow British stars Dina Asher-Smith and Daryll Neita for continental gold should have been an easy sell.
Instead, there were nearly 10,000 empty seats as just 13,623 people watched Hunt’s moment of glory in a stadium that can hold 23,000. The swathes of vacant chairs was a terrible look for one of athletics’ premier events, and certainly not befitting the compelling, world-class sport being delivered on the track and in the field.
It’s hard not to blame the extortionate ticket prices being charged by Birmingham 2026 organisers, with a Category A ticket costing a mammoth £150, with no concessions discount, for Monday evening’s session that included Hunt in the women’s 100m. Prices for those tickets were slightly lower on Tuesday and Wednesday at £110 but duly surge back up to £150 for the final four evenings of the event later this week, again with no discount for concessions.
By contrast, a similar ticket for the women’s 100m final at the previous European Championships, in Rome two years ago, was €88 (£75).
There were some lower-priced tickets available in Birmingham, with the cheapest in Category E being £26, but unsurprisingly they had long since been snapped up, and the nearly 10,000 empty seats showed the appetite for the more expensive categories was limited.
According to figures from the organisers, Alexander Stadium was 55 per cent full on Monday morning for the opening session, 59 per cent full by the evening and 56 per cent full on Tuesday morning. Organisers were also keen to point out that a family of four could attend the event for £30 and maintained that they were “delighted” with overall ticket sales.
A Birmingham 2026 spokesperson said ticket sales had “far surpassed our targets” and added that “Friday, Saturday and Sunday evening sessions are approaching sell-out, with several other sessions close to capacity”.
The Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, Lisa Nandy, also weighed in to defend organisers.
She said: “Some of the ticket prices are higher but half of all the tickets here at the championships are £30 and under. Organisers have really worked to make it accessible. The numbers have been a bit low being the first few days. I think we will see that rise steadily and hoping for big numbers this weekend.”
This outlook wasn’t shared by everyone, with the BBC’s lead athletics commentator, and former Olympic silver medallist, Steve Cram saying during Monday’s broadcast, “A little disappointing in terms of spectators, I have to say. Particularly down the back straight there. There’s not very many people at all in those stands.”
Former world champion marathon runner and current pundit Paula Radcliffe also told the Press Association: “It is a shame because I think there is the willingness but I don’t know whether perhaps as a sport we need to look at the pricing and accessibility for those tickets.”
Tickets aren’t the only expensive item for spectators, with no on-site parking forcing fans to cough up £22.50 for an inconvenient park-and-ride service, while the food and drinks prices from vendors in and around the stadium have reached almost ludicrous levels.
Supporters are being made to pay as much as £18.50 for a BBQ pork roll and chips (or a bargain £13.50 for just the pork roll...), while a bottle of water costs nearly £4.
While a half-empty stadium is a bad look for the Championships, especially in a country where sport is deeply embedded in the national consciousness, as shown during the London 2012 Olympics when even niche sports such as water polo, handball or Greco-Roman wrestling would sell out, there could be an even greater, unforeseen consequence to the issues.
Earlier this week, London submitted its official bid to host the 2029 World Athletics Championships at the London Stadium and the bid team is due to make its final presentation on Friday before World Athletics makes its decision next month.
London is hoping to host athletics’ flagship event for just the second time, after the 2017 edition, but faces stiff competition from Rome, Munich and Nairobi – with the Kenyan capital seeking to become the first African city to hold the world championships.
The UK struggling to sell tickets for another of the sport’s biggest events, while also enduring complaints about pricing, just as World Athletics is considering its options for 2029, will certainly not help the cause. It may even be a fatal blow to the British capital’s chances.
Birmingham has proved in the past it can put on a hugely successful sporting show, with the 2022 Commonwealth Games in the city considered a roaring success, including breaking the record for ticket sales in the event’s history.
Perhaps this European Athletics Championship has simply been a misstep or maybe a near-capacity crowd over the final few days will make everyone forget about the slow start in the stands. Either way, let’s hope there is no knock-on effect providing a sting in the tail.
