Coe: Olympic ballot not perfect but fair

Games chief Sebastian Coe has defended the Olympic ticketing process as millions of people remain in the dark over their applications.

There was little evidence of payments being taken today despite Locog saying 60 per cent of all 1.8 million applications would be dealt with by midnight tonight. Many who reported that their accounts had been debited had mistaken the debits for Olympic payments and have been left wondering about their chances of success.

Lord Coe, chairman of Locog, admitted the system was "not perfect" but said the ballot system was the fairest way of distributing the 6.6 million tickets on sale to the British public.

Locog emailed all applicants to say the "vast majority" of payments would be taken by May 31 and explaining that anyone who paid by cheque and was due a refund of more than £1,000 would get it by June 10.