I'm not just talking about football tickets, which the organisers were always going to struggle to persuade enough people to buy - I'm talking about a number of other key Olympic sports, like weightlifting, beach volleyball, boxing and even basketball.

Last year there were an astonishing 22 million applications in the first round ballot for the 6.6 million tickets available to the British public. Demand surprised even the most optimistic London 2012 officials. A number of events were more than 10 times over-subscribed.

When the remaining tickets went online during the second round sale last summer, most were snapped up in minutes. The British public appeared to have an insatiable appetite for the Olympics. There were never going to be enough tickets to go round.

The beach volleyball at Horseguard's Parade is one of the events in danger of not selling out. Photo: Getty

The result, though, was very different. Only 150,000 of those 1.2 million people decided to make a purchase. Less than half of the 928,000 tickets were bought. The British public, who a year ago had been so desperate to get their hands on whatever tickets they could find, were now sitting on their hands instead.

So, on Wednesday this week London 2012 opened up the sale to everybody in the UK. Regardless of whether you applied, or even registered an interest, last year, you're now able to log on to the London 2012 website and make a purchase. With more than 60 million of us now able to get involved, not to mention the rest of the European Union who are also entitled to buy direct from London 2012, you might have thought that the remaining few hundred thousand tickets wouldn't stay on sale for long.

Yet, more than 48 hours after this sale began, there are still nearly 300,000 tickets remaining. Beach volleyball, being staged right in the heart of London at Horse Guards Parade, was expected to be one of the high demand events of London 2012. The Games' organisers never predicted that with just nine weeks until the opening ceremony they would still have tickets for 34 different beach volleyball sessions on sale.

Weightlifting has 22 sessions which are yet to sell out, volleyball has 27, fencing 17, handball 19, taekwondo 10, basketball 28, boxing also 28, and there are others with availability too.

Even if these tickets do eventually sell, and there's no guarantee that they will, there's another batch of 150,000 tickets which won't even be available for another month. These are tickets which have had to be held back while seating plans have been finalised at some of the venues.

For example, the beach volleyball stadium is a temporary structure, which is still to be built. Only once it has been finished will the exact number of available tickets be known. So there are thousands more beach volleyball tickets which haven't yet reached a marketplace which is already looking surprisingly saturated.

The story with football tickets is far worse. There are more than a million left on sale, with even high profile matches like the Team GB women's game in Cardiff, which will kick off the whole Games on 25 July, struggling to sell more than a quarter of the available seats.

I'm sure that many of you will have your own views about why the demand for London 2012 tickets has dropped off so sharply. One of the main reasons is surely frustration with the process.

There have been a number of problems with the Ticketmaster website - even this week many of those trying to purchase tickets have been held in lengthy online queues, only to be told after half an hour that the tickets which they'd requested were no longer available. Others have probably decided that it's too late to book transport and hotels.

Whatever the reason, there's now the real risk of a sight at London 2012 which few people expected - empty seats.

It's a word that feels very out of place when considered alongside the rest of the project.

So much has gone right for London 2012 since the city was awarded the Olympics back in 2005 - in particular the achievement in making sure that all the venues will be ready in time.

Ticketing has been the one area that has appeared to lurch from one fiasco to the next.

Olympic mascots Wenlock (left) and Mandeville have been busy touring the UK promoting the London Games amid ticketing fiasco. Photo: Getty 

No Games can be great without people filling the stadia. It's the tickets which give those spectators access to the wonderful Olympic arenas.

It's tickets which should connect the public to the Games by being their visible invitation to join the party.

But for many people ticketing is currently succeeding only in giving them a sense of disconnection from London 2012 - not connection.

The website, which is run by Ticketmaster, has struggled to cope with demand from the start of the process.

You might recall that the first sales period had to be extended after the site crashed, or 'slowed down' to use London 2012's chosen language.

There were more problems in the second round of sales when thousands of people thought that they'd bought tickets, only to be told the following day that they wouldn't be charged, as they hadn't actually got any tickets at all.

Others who purchased tickets to watch synchronised swimming were more fortunate. Finger trouble by a member of staff at London 2012 was responsible for putting on sale ten thousand tickets which didn't exist.

These customers have had to be offered a swap with seats at some of the Games' most sought after events like the men's 100m final.

These are the specifics. The overall picture is just as damaging. Hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom had spent hours carefully making their selection, left with no tickets at all.

It's hardly the kind of publicity that London 2012 organisers were hoping for little more than six months before the Olympic opening ceremony.

Of course, part of the problem is the extraordinary demand for tickets. London 2012 cannot be blamed for that - in some ways they are the victims of their own success in drumming up so much interest.

This level of demand, though, is hardly a surprise, and organisers had nearly six years to prepare their ticketing system.

The truth is that it's not working, and it should be. In the end this will probably all be forgotten. London 2012 will be rightly judged on the success of the fast approaching days in July, August and September of Olympic and Paralympic competition.

Today's resale farce, though, is not the way in which anybody at London 2012 wanted to start the Olympic year. It's highly embarrassing.

All of us who dream that the Games will go well can only hope that the organisation of those days of competition is rather better than the shambles of the ticketing process which has preceded it.

The number of ticket sales at this stage in the process for a Paralympics are "unprecedented", they boast.

Well that's true, although if you'll excuse my pedantry for a moment then I'll point out that this has to be the case, as never before have Paralympic tickets been put on sale this far out from the start of the event.

But put London 2012's spin to one side, and the figures are still extremely impressive. 116,000 separate applications for 1.14m tickets. At least one price category for one session is going to have to go to ballot in 16 of the 20 sports.

Darren Harris from Wolverhampton, who is blind, fights Julian Davis (rear) during International Paralympic Day in Trafalgar Square earlier in September. Photo: PA

The Sydney Paralympics in 2000 are widely accepted to have been the most successful ever. A total of 1.2m tickets were sold for those Games. London 2012 still has a way to go to match those figures, as many of the million initial applications will be for the same tickets, but it's an excellent start.

I was lucky enough to be sent to Sydney to cover the 2000 Paralympics. They are some of the best memories of my broadcasting career. They were a truly great Games. The Olympics had generated so much positive momentum that, once they were over, hundreds of thousands of people decided that they wanted more.

By the time that the Paralympics had begun it was almost impossible to get hold of a ticket for any of the swimming finals. There wasn't a spare seat in the house for the Opening and Closing Ceremonies. It was hard to fault those Paralympics in any way, but I'm confident enough to make this prediction: The London 2012 Paralympics will be even better.

British sports fans have proved again over the past few months that they're some of the most dedicated spectators in the world.

First Olympic tickets were snapped up, and now Paralympic tickets too. Many of those who've applied for Paralympic tickets won't yet know much about some of the athletes that they're likely to see. They've bought tickets because they want to be a part of the occasion. Yes, they'll cheer for the British team, but other competitors will be given their fair share of the acclaim too.

I'll take a tiny portion of the credit for the large number of applications for London 2012 Paralympic tickets, as I've been encouraging all my friends to apply! No, I don't have 116,000 friends, but all those given the chance to compete at the Paralympics next year will find that they do.

London 2012 is not just the Olympics, it's the Olympics and Paralympics, and I'm absolutely sure that it's not just the Olympics that will live long in the memory.

I was wide awake, laptop ready, before Breakfast television had even gone on air. Around the country hundreds of thousands of people were doing exactly the same. Kettles were boiling and fingers were being loosened ahead of what we all knew was going to be a mad scramble for Olympic tickets.

0600 BST was the appointed opening time of the second round sales. London 2012 organisers had always been nervous that their system would struggle to cope with the demand. If they'd hoped that this 0600 BST start would deter the less enthusiastic, they were wrong. Up and down streets alarms had been going off from 0530 BST.

Only those who'd missed out in the first ballot were entitled to buy tickets today - that was a total of 1.2m people. I was one of them.

I'm very fortunate, as I'll be working at the Games next year, so my desperation to get hold of a ticket is much less than for many of you. I struggle to imagine how anxious I'd have been this morning if I, like most of you, knew that the minutes after the 0600 BST alarm might determine whether I'd ever make it into the Olympic Park.

I'd made thorough preparations for today's process. Like everybody else, I'd studied the list of available sessions. In the end I'd decided to plump for beach volleyball. There were still some tickets available to the quarter-finals on a Saturday evening. These were bound to be popular, so I was well aware that I'd need to get in quick.

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By 0558 BST I was already logged onto the London 2012 website and refreshing the list of beach volleyball sessions. At 0600 BST exactly the availability appeared. Quick as a flash I chose my session and went straight to the checkout basket. This was first come first served, so snooze and you're going to lose.

By 0601 BST my card details had been entered and my payment was processing. Within another 15 seconds I'd been asked for the password to verify my bank card - the final stage. It almost seemed too good to be true. Sadly, it was. For a minute nothing happened, and then I received the following message: 'Sorry, we are unable to process your application'.

I was directed back to the start again. No time to question why. Time was of the essence. I went through the same process. Minutes later came the same result, 'Sorry, we are unable to process your application'.

Re-assurance came via Twitter. Thousands of people were enduring a similar experience. The London 2012 site was slowing down close to a standstill. Eventually I was able to return to my account page. The message that greeted me came as a surprise. I was informed that I could no longer apply as I had already submitted an application. There was even a reference number. Presumably one of my two previous attempts had been successful after all? But London 2012 told us that we would receive an email confirming our application. I and I know via Twitter, many others, have not received that email.

I won't find out until the weekend if my application did go through, and if it was successful. I fear that many people who applied for the most popular athletics tickets might have a nasty shock over the next couple of days when they find out that they weren't first come so ended up not being served. If that is the case then those people are going to be understandably frustrated, as by then there will probably only be football tickets remaining.

I can have no complaint. There will never be a better time to be a BBC sports correspondent than in London next summer. But I do feel for those of you who struggled in the same way that I did this morning. I know how much many of you care about the Olympics, and how much it means to be able to take up this once in a lifetime opportunity of watching the Games on home soil.

The real test of this second round process will come over the weekend when everybody finds out which tickets they got. If we all end up with what we think we bought, then nobody's going to worry that the site was slow for half an hour. If my worst fears are realised, and many miss out altogether for a second time, then Lord Coe and his team will rightly face some very tough questions.

In the meantime Coe could be forgiven for spending some of his time counting all the cash that's been raised. If he logs onto the London 2012 bank account he'll see that his organisation is about £400m better off than it was in April. That's how much has already been raised from ticket sales, out of an eventual target of £500m. It's an extraordinary achievement.

I've had many conversations with the London 2012 organisers over the years about predictions for demand on tickets. I was always confident that by July 2012 the Games (apart from football) would have sold out - others were less so - but never in my wildest dreams did I believe that more than a year out from the start of the Olympics, people would be setting alarms for 0530 BST just to have a chance of snapping up the few remaining handball tickets.

Many of you have strong views about the ticketing process, and I know that the majority believe that there are flaws, but it's important that we also reflect the incredible success in terms of demand. We are a nation of sports lovers - there are too many of us who want to go to the Games. That's always been the fundamental problem.

What Lord Coe and his team have managed to do is turn that interest in sport and the Olympics into a burning desire for tickets, almost regardless of the event. He's persuaded people to buy into the Olympic experience. Our own personal struggles to get hold of tickets are largely due to the exceptional demand which has been generated.

The success of the ticket sales have massively reduced the risk that the Games will make a loss. That's good news for everybody, as otherwise the government is responsible for picking up the tab.

But - and this is a big but - a price has been paid. Many people have been left feeling disillusioned. The next big challenge for the organisers is to turn public opinion back onto their side. An important first step will come this weekend if today's early risers find out that the process has actually worked and they receive the tickets that they're expecting.

This poses the greatest challenge that Lord Coe and his team have faced since London was awarded the Games in 2005. They have to manage the disappointment of the vast number of people who'd dreamed of watching the men's 100 metres final inside the Olympic stadium, but now know that they'll have to settle for seeing it on television instead.

That, of course, was always going to be the case. We are a nation of sports lovers. It was never going to be possible to build a stadium large enough to seat even a fraction of those who wanted to be there. I've been given some figures which illustrate the extraordinary level of demand for 2012 tickets.

There will be 650 sessions across all sports, with an average of four price categories at each one. That means that there were a total of about 2500 different options for people to consider when they applied. More than 1500 of those pricing categories across the 650 sessions were oversubscribed. Some people who chose 'bankers' like early rounds of hockey, weightlifting and handball have been left disappointed.

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I can also reveal that the average application was for 12 tickets at a total average cost of £500. So, one million people who had offered to pay £500 each have ended up with nothing. No wonder there's such a feeling of frustration amongst those who missed out.

All is not lost, though, if you've tried and, so far failed, to get your hands on any tickets. Of the 6.6m available to the public, more than a million remain. Many are for football, but there are others available which will get you onto the Olympic Park.

Admittedly, the majority of the tickets which haven't been sold for the more popular sports will be in the higher price categories, but the London Organising Committee of the Olympic Games (Locog) are still expecting great interest when the second round of sales begins.

The million people who missed out first time will have priority when tickets go back on sale. They'll receive an email next week explaining how the process will work. The fact that there are so many of them will pose problems for Ticketmaster, who run the ticketing system, as the second stage will be done on a first come first served basis.

If all one million people log on at the same time then it could pose obvious problems, comparable to the demand for the Take That concerts, but Locog are confident that the system is sufficiently robust.

And if you're one of the unlucky million, you don't have long to wait. You'll be sent a code which will enable you to access the ticketing system, and I'm assured that the sale will begin before the end of June. There will be a window of around ten days, and then those who received some, but not all, of their application will be invited to re-join the process. It's likely that by this stage nearly all of the tickets will have been sold.

Meanwhile, many of the disappointed applicants continue to head to official European ticket agents, who are obliged to make their allocations available to residents of all countries in the EU.

For those of you who registered with France's site by the deadline of midnight last night, I have good news and bad news.

The good news is that only around 4,000 of you managed to do so, and you'll have exclusive access when the French tickets are put on sale on June 13th. The bad news is that many of those tickets will be sold in conjunction with a hotel room, so if you don't need accommodation then you might have to end up with an unwanted extra cost. For tickets to the best events some people are likely to decide that that's a price worth paying.

Have you been lucky, or are you one of the disappointed million? Do you accept that Locog had an impossible job and that there simply isn't a system that could have kept everybody happy, or do you have other ideas?

Whatever your experience so far in the London 2012 ticket process, I will be interested to read your views.

It's an interesting discussion, and I'm hoping that you'll take the chance to give me your views here.

Deloitte are currently carrying out a feasibility study.

They've been told to examine all options. First they'll need to show if a European Games are financially viable. If that test is passed then the second question to be answered is should this become an extra event in the calendar, or should all the different sports' European Championships be merged into this new event?

British gymnast Louis Smith believes a European Games would improve his chances of Olympic success. Photo: AP

It's hard to see how there could be room in the calendar for an extra event. Swimming and athletics are already planning to hold their own championships every two years.

If there's no space for anything else then the only way that a European Games could happen would be by getting rid of the existing events and using the new Games as a replacement.

Scrapping existing events raises the issue of compensation. The governing bodies of athletics, swimming, gymnastics etc would only agree to give up their current competitions if they were reimbursed for loss of sponsorship and television revenue.

The feasibility study will need to calculate how much revenue a European Games would generate, and determine if that would be enough to pay off all the individual sports.

Patrick Hickey, who's the man behind the proposals, is convinced that a European Games would raise more money than all the other events combined. He describes the initial response from sponsors as "colossal".

Hickey's argument is that European sportsmen and women would benefit more from appearing together in a multi-sport event than they currently gain from their own individual championships.

He cites the general decline in recent performances by European nations at Olympic Games (Team GB is a notable exception), and claims that this is partly because they're missing out on the experience gained by competitors from other continents at events like the Pan American Games and Asian Games.

British athletes already have the Commonwealth Games, so in many ways this is less of an issue for them than other Europeans, but there does still seem to be plenty of support for the proposals amongst British team members.

Louis Smith, the Olympic bronze medal winning gymnast, told the BBC: "I'd definitely like to take part in something like that. The more competitions I can get in, the more major events before an Olympics to improve me, the better. It's nice to have competitions at a big scale, so I look forward to something like that."

Whatever the conclusions of the Deloitte report, there's plenty of politics which will need to be played out before a vote can be taken in November when the General Assembly of European Olympic Committees gathers in Sochi.

The British Olympic Association (BOA) will support the proposals. That's no surprise. A European Games would give the BOA an additional major event, beyond the Olympics, when it would have control over, and they would be able to market Britain's best athletes.

But the European sports will be far harder to convince.

If you'd been running an event for decades which appeared to be working just as you wanted, then would you really be happy to give it to somebody else to organise under a multi-sport umbrella?

In the end, though, a European Games could never take place without public support, so here's your chance to let us know what you think.

There's never going to be a stadium large enough to accommodate all the people who want to watch the men's 100 metres final and, with so much money needing to be raised from ticket sales, those lucky enough to be given the chance to attend will often complain that they're being charged too much.

So when London 2012 chairman Lord Coe and his team sat down to begin work on their ticketing strategy they were well aware that they would be criticised whatever they decided. They also knew that they could do absolutely nothing about one of the most common complaints.

> Q&A: Tickets go on sale on 15 March but how do you get your hands on them?

Visa is one of the International Olympic Committee's main sponsors. In return for the huge sums of money paid for a tier one sponsorship, the company is given exclusive rights to the Games. That means that if you want to purchase anything inside the Olympic Park with a card - or if you go online to buy tickets - you'll discover that you can't do so without Visa.

Visa's management are fully expecting stick once people realise this and they're used to it from previous Games. Here's a statement I've been given by Visa Europe:

"There are more than 100 million Visa cards in the UK, most of which are debit cards, so virtually every household has at least one Visa card.

"People who don't currently have a Visa debit or credit card and don't have time or don't want to apply for one are able to obtain a Visa prepaid card or a Visa virtual prepaid card to purchase Olympic and Paralympic Games tickets.

"This gives everyone who wants to apply for tickets online an option to do so."

It's the first sentence in that statement that's the key one, the part that points out that most people's Visa cards are debit not credit. This is going to be a big issue for some people for the following reason.

The 2012 ticketing process does not work on a the basis of first come first served. There will be no advantage gained by applying on the first or the last day of the six-week booking window. All the events that are oversubscribed will be balloted, so when you apply for tickets you won't actually know how many you'll end up successfully purchasing.

If, for example, you're desperate to see some of the athletics finals you would be wise to apply for more than one evening, as these tickets are bound to be oversubscribed. If you like, you can apply for tickets for every evening session inside the stadium. That would give you the greatest chance of being successful in getting at least some tickets.

Of course the problem with such a strategy is that you have no idea what you'll finish up with. You could end up with nothing, but, on the other hand, you could get everything that you've requested (if you get very lucky). If that does happen then you might not be feeling quite so fortunate when you discover how much you'll have to pay for the tickets.

This is where the issue of the debit card kicks in.The London 2012 organisers are only promising to tell us which tickets we've managed to buy by 24 June, but successful applicants will have the money taken from their Visa account in the middle of May.

The first that you're likely to know about having been successful with a ticket application is when money suddenly disappears from your account. You won't find out exactly which tickets you've got for several weeks after that. Now, if you have a credit card account this is not quite so bad as you'll still have a few weeks after the money has been taken to pay it back.

The problem with the debit cards - which as Visa points out is what most of us have - or the virtual cards is that the money will go straight out of your account. If you're not careful then your reward for receiving Olympic tickets could be an unexpected overdraft.

All of this means that strategy is going to be key for anybody applying for Olympic tickets.

It's safe to assume that many people will apply for the cheapest seats for each session so, by going for a more expensive category, you will probably increase your chances of success, albeit at a greater cost.

Whatever you apply for, the most important piece of advice is to make sure that you have enough money in your account in the middle of May.

Paul Williamson, London 2012's head of ticketing told me: "When you check out of the ticketing website you will be told the maximum value of the tickets that you have asked to purchase. You need to make sure that in the middle of May - and we will remind you - that money is available in your account."

I'm sure some of you are thinking, it doesn't matter if you end up with more tickets than you need as London 2012 have already said they're going to organise a re-sell website, so it will be easy to get rid of any extras and get the money back.

Well that's true, but there's a catch.

What they haven't told you yet is that the resell website won't be launched until next year. So if you do find yourself purchasing more tickets than you want in May then you're going to be stuck with them for at least six months.

I should point out that it's also possible to apply for tickets via a paper form. These can be found at branches of Lloyds TSB (or your local library if you live in Northern Ireland). If you do this, though, then you'll need to send a cheque for the maximum value of the tickets that you've requested. You'll have to wait several months to be refunded for any unsuccessful applications. Few people are likely to choose this method.

There's no way to keep everybody happy. I've pointed out some of the pitfalls here as a word of warning to anybody applying for tickets over the next six weeks. There are, of course, many positives to the way that London 2012 have decided to run the process.

By deciding against a first-come-first-served rush they've avoided the chaos that would ensue in the opening minutes, with the potential for the website to crash and the best tickets going to those with the fastest fingers.

Instead London 2012 have give us all the option to take a more considered approach over our ticket choices. My advice to you is simple: make sure that you do consider your strategy carefully. There's no rush.

And, most importantly, make sure that you only apply for what you can afford. I look forward to reading about some of your experiences about the process here over the coming days.

Good luck!

How on earth has this happened?

The reaction from most people has been one of total surprise: "How is it possible that £9bn can be spent on the London Games, and yet we still can't afford to pay for the British team?"

However, you won't have seen any sports journalists falling off their chairs in shock at the news. We've known for several years that the BOA has been facing serious funding issues.

BOA chief Andy Hunt revealed the extent of the funding crisis

The BOA has changed a great deal since 2005 when London won the right to host the Olympics. The chairman, Sir Craig Reedie, and chief executive, Simon Clegg, have been replaced by Lord Moynihan and Andy Hunt.

The headquarters in south-west London have been sold (at a profit of several million pounds), and the organisation has moved to smart rented accommodation in the centre of the city. The ambitions of the BOA were always going to shift once a London bid had been successful.

It had suddenly become the National Olympic Committee of a host nation, and of course that brings new responsibilities. It also brought new opportunities - in particular, the chance to make the most of the higher profile that was bound to be given to British sport during the years leading up to the Games.

So, nobody would have been surprised, or even that concerned, when the BOA's new leadership team of Moynihan and Hunt first outlined plans to expand the organisation. The debate since, though, has been around the scale of their ambitions, and the cost.

The British Olympic Association actually has quite a limited role in the British sporting set-up. It's often described as a "glorified travel agent". That's because the organisation's main role only kicks in every two years. Its job is to send a team to an Olympic Games, kit them out, and to look after team members while they're there.

The reality is, that during the rest of the Olympic cycle, the BOA has little or no role at all, apart from attending the Youth Olympics and other smaller scale events.

That's because funding for elite athletes comes from UK Sport and not the BOA. Many other Olympic Committees around the world have far greater responsibilities than the BOA - many handle all the money that goes into elite sport.

That's not the case over here. The BOA doesn't get its hands on any lottery or government money. So in terms of power, UK Sport has far more than the BOA.

That's a source of tension. As soon as the BOA tries to expand, it finds itself treading on the toes of UK Sport. Take, for example, Sir Clive Woodward's much talked about coaching programme for the BOA.

UK Sport has never liked it. Why? Because it believes that that's its responsibility, and that its own programmes are absolutely fine without anybody else getting in the way.

Let's talk now about money. Normally, the BOA would raise cash by marketing the Olympic rings in its home territory. Those rights, though, have to be transferred to the organising committee if there's a "home" Olympics.

So currently the BOA doesn't have anything to sell. Before the London bid was successful a deal was agreed that Locog should pay the BOA about £30m over the seven years leading up to London 2012 in return for these marketing rights. Since 2005 those running the BOA have known that they had this guaranteed income.

The current BOA management have always claimed that that was a bad deal for the BOA. They say that it should have been worth much more. Whatever the rights and wrongs of that argument, one thing is for sure. The BOA has known for years that this was the case. When it started to spend more money, it did so in the knowledge of how much income it would be receiving from Locog.

And there HAS been a dramatic increase in the amount spent. For example, staff salaries have doubled to more than £4m. I understand that when last year's accounts are published in a few months time they will show yet another increase.

It doesn't take a mathematical genius to work out that if you have a guaranteed income of £30m over seven years and you spend £4m a year on wages, that doesn't leave a lot for much else.

The BOA does have other limited income sources. For example, it holds its charity Gold Ball every year. But the revenue from this is tiny compared to what's received from Locog.

The BOA will point to the fact that over the past two years the books have been balanced, but this is due to the millions that were raised from the sale of their headquarters and are now being spent on day-to-day operations.

Does all this really matter? It won't, as long as the BOA can fulfil its main commitment, which is to look after the British team at an Olympics - in particular, of course, the London Games. The BOA still believes that the money can be raised, but as I've hinted already, it doesn't have many friends in sporting circles.

There's a suspicion about empire building. That's why there's unlikely to be any cash coming the BOA's way from UK Sport or the government, and Locog believes that it's given enough already.

So it seems that if Team GB is to have the funding it wants at the 2012 Olympics then it's either going to have to be sponsors who step forward to assist, or the public. In the current economic climate that's not a particularly strong position to be in, especially as there's little incentive for sponsors to get involved when they're not allowed to use the prized logo of the Olympic rings.

Life will change for the BOA after 2012. It will get its rings back and will be able to take much more control over its financial affairs. The problem, though, is what happens before then.

The BOA's management is well aware that if the organisation is to retain any credibility at all then it simply has to find a way to fund the British team at its home Olympics. In times of trouble, though, you often find out who are your friends. If the BOA is feeling a little lonely, then those who believe that too much money has been spent on non-priority areas, will argue that it's getting what it deserves.

Reporting on the 2018 and 2022 Fifa World Cup bids this week makes me feel a bit like Charlie in that chocolate factory. I love sport and am fascinated by politics. Add the two together, throw in a touch of royalty and you'll understand why I count myself as one of the holders of those golden tickets.

What sport and politics have in common is their unpredictability - and this sums up the drama of the World Cup bidding process. How about we put 22 powerful men in a room together and tell them to elect the nation which will host one of the world's biggest sporting events - a competition likely to generate billions of pounds. I guarantee intrigue, tension, excitement and, yes, plenty of drama.

Ten years ago, I was here in Zurich to report on the 2006 bidding decision. I had covered much of the final month of that campaign, making a film for Newsnight on the closing stages of England's doomed bid. Wherever I travelled and whomever I spoke to, I was told that South Africa had it in the bag. "Sepp Blatter (Fifa president) wants South Africa to win," they all said, "and Sepp Blatter gets what he wants."

It was a major upset. I can still recall the pained expression on the face of Danny Jordaan, the South African bid leader, as Blatter opened the envelope and announced Germany as the winner. For two years, he had believed that he was about to bring the World Cup to South Africa. That honour had been taken away from him by politics which were ultimately out of his control. He eventually got his reward, of course, four years later but I know that he will never forget that day of defeat in Zurich in 2000.

Prince William, David Cameron and David Beckham hope to impress delegates in Zurich. Photo: Getty

Fast forward five years to Singapore in 2005. Paris was the red-hot favourite to win the right to host the 2012 Summer Olympics. It would take a whole separate blog post to explain the reasons why they blew it - and it has been well written before - but once again we lovers of sports politics were treated to a week of unforgettable drama.

What Fifa and the International Olympic Committee have in common are small electorates. It is usually 24 voting members for Fifa and around 115 for the IOC. What this means is that a few successful face-to-face meetings in the frantic last hours of a campaign can make all the difference. One vote lost here or gained there can be all that separates victory from defeat. London beat Paris by 54 votes to 50. If two people had changed their minds, it could all have been so different.

No wonder that the lobbies of the relevant hotels are packed until the last drink is served on the night before a vote. In sports elections like this, every single vote really does count. If Tony Blair had gone to bed an hour earlier on the night before the vote in Singapore and missed the opportunity to see three or four more IOC members, then we might well be talking now about Paris 2012 and not London 2012.

On Thursday, the host nations for two World Cups will be decided and I can honestly say that nobody can really be sure who is going to win. The Baur au Lac Hotel is where it will all be decided. That is the five-star venue where the Fifa voters are staying. It is where the wheeler dealing is taking place. If this was an important political contest, rather than a sporting political one, then you would not be able to get close to the action.

Imagine being inside Downing Street the night before Margaret Thatcher decided that she had to step down as prime minister, having been told that she was in danger of being beaten by Michael Heseltine. Of course, it could never happen. That type of history is made behind closed doors.

Not here. The hotel's concierge politely held open the door for me as I walked inside. I turned to the left and headed into the lobby. There was Andy Anson, the head of the England bid, leaning over a shelf as he held talks with Jack Warner - the man from Trinidad whose support England simply must have if they are to have any chance of winning.

It was all happening right in front of me. The negotiations that could ultimately determine the outcome of the contest. David Cameron then marched past, flanked by the usual security. He had been meeting another Fifa voter in a room upstairs. Everybody looked towards him. What could we read into his face? Who had he been meeting? How had it gone? You will not be surprised to hear that the prime minister gave nothing away. But that did not stop everybody else in the hotel lobby entering yet another round of speculation about what would happen on Thursday.

In many ways, sports politics is a cruel business. I am just an observer but many of those I am watching have dedicated the last two years of their lives to this process. They now have to plead face to face, in front of a gallery of spectators, for the votes that would make all that hard work worthwhile.

The vote is going to be close on Thursday. If the England bid team ends up being unsuccessful, nobody will be able to accuse them of not working hard enough.

So the remaining question: "Has Sepp Blatter missed his chance to restore credibility to the World Cup voting process, or is there still time?" still needs to be answered.

Fifa president Sepp Blatter did do one thing at his news conference on Friday that I've never seen him do before. He admitted that he'd made a mistake.

To regular Fifa watchers that was as unexpected as it would have been if he'd stood up and announced that he'd found Lord Lucan.

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In hindsight he knows that was wrong. It's led to allegations of collusion and vote trading between the bidders.

Admitting a mistake wouldn't have been easy for a man who usually likes people to believe that he can do little wrong.

There are, though, always two challenges facing somebody who's done something wrong. The first is to own up to it. The second is to do something about it and on that Blatter failed completely.

He said that it was too late to change the process. Whatever the problems with the original decision, he claimed that the only option now was to go ahead with both votes on 2 December.

To be fair to him, he was under a great deal of pressure from the 2022 bidders to do exactly that, as they have budgets and contracts that come to an end on that date.

It is, though, a big gamble by Blatter. He knows how damaging the recent allegations have been for Fifa.

By splitting the two votes he could, at least, have lessened the allegations of collusion. By doing nothing he risks being accused of turning a blind eye to the problems.

There is still one date in the Fifa diary that could change the landscape of the World Cup contest.

On 17 November Fifa's ethics committee will give its verdict on the allegations that have led to the provisional suspension of two members of the executive committee, Nigeria's Amos Adamu and Tahitian Reynald Temarii, after allegations printed in the Sunday Times.

Blatter pointed to this over and over again during his news conference. Even though he decided that he could change nothing this past week, there is still a body with the power to take tough decisions.

Fifa's credibility remains on the line. All those inside and outside the organisation are well aware of that. At the moment there's little faith in the integrity of the voting process.
My personal view is the greatest problem is the size of the electorate.

When it's only 24 it means that each individual voter has far too much influence.
That's not going to change for this time, but is something that's likely to be looked at in years to come.
The International Olympic Committee, for example, has about 115 voters, and even that organisation has had more than its fair share of difficulties.

In the meantime, in many ways Sepp Blatter has passed the buck to the ethics committee.

If the 2018 and 2022 World Cup votes are to be accepted as fair by football lovers around the globe, then much is going to have to happen between now and the beginning of December.

"Reports and Updates on the 2010 Fifa World Cup, 2014 Fifa World Cup, 2018 and 2022 Fifa World Cups, and the 2010 Fifa Women's Under 20 and Under 17 World Cups."

Important stuff, of course, but hardly fascinating. The reality, as we all know, is going to be very different.

Hidden behind the words on the agenda "2018 and 2022 FIFA World Cups" lie allegations so serious that the credibility of the whole bidding process is in question.

All 24 members of the Fifa executive committee should have been in Zurich for the meeting. There will, of course, only be 22.

Two members have been suspended following the allegations in the Sunday Times about cash for votes. The cases of those two won't be considered by Fifa's ethics committee until the middle of November, but nobody is under the illusion that their suspension will enable this all to go away.

Fifa's difficulty is that traditionally it's been very slow to react when confronted by problems. In the past, allegations about the organisation have normally been brushed aside.

Transparency isn't a word that springs to mind when talk turns to Fifa. In fact, until a year ago, the rules of the contests for the 2018 and 2022 World Cups were seen to be so sensitive by Fifa that they remained a secret. Bidding nations were sent a copy but only on the condition that they weren't disclosed to any outside parties.

I'm not normally one to blow my own trumpet, but I hope that on this one occasion you'll forgive me a short blast. I spent a great deal of time at the end of last year pushing Fifa to publish the rules. I'd revealed that England had bought designer handbags for the wives of all the Fifa voters, but nobody could actually tell me if that was an infringement of the rules, because the rules were a secret. It was a farcical situation.

Eventually, Fifa got so fed up with my constant emails and phone calls that it finally agreed to publish the regulations on its website.

It's those same regulations which have been scrutinised in so much detail over recent weeks as the various allegations have emerged. Now, I'm not expecting thanks from Fifa any time soon, but deep down President Sepp Blatter must be grateful that I did push him to publish. Just imagine if the Sunday Times had gone to press with their revelations and the rules of the contest had still remained a secret.....

By the way, for those of you who are interested, here's a link to the most relevant rules of conduct for bidding nations.

So what Fifa needs to do this week is show that it's a changed organisation. That nervousness of putting any information into the public domain has to be conquered fast.

If the votes for 2018 and 2022 are to have any credibility at all then Fifa will need to make the process so transparent that even the most cynical members of the public can be convinced. That means that Fifa is going to have to do something which in the past has not come naturally. It's going to have to tell everybody what's going on.

This week, the Fifa executive committee will decide the format for the voting. Some of the most damaging allegations have centred around potential collusion between candidates for 2018 and 2022. Fifa has to come up with a process that prevents that, and then tell us what that process is. Nobody is pretending that will be easy.

The latest spat between England and Russia illustrates how the tension is building amongst the competing nations as December 2nd approaches.

England are unlikely to gain much from lodging a complaint about comments attributed to Alexei Sorokin, the leader of Russia's bid, on London's "high crime rate" and youth alcohol problems. The fact that a complaint has been lodged at all, though, is probably a reflection on how difficult this contest has become for all those involved in it.

An electorate of 24 is so small that one slip can influence one vote, and potentially the outcome of the whole thing. When that electorate possibly begins to shrink, with the suspension of two members just weeks before the vote, it's hardly surprising that the bidding nations begin to show the strain. Their carefully planned strategies might have to be thrown out of the window if some members are prevented from voting.

I've been asked over and over again during recent days what I believe will be the impact of the Sunday Times allegations on the England bid. Well, in many ways the answer is up to Sepp Blatter and Fifa. What all those who love international football should hope is that these allegations will increase the chances of the best candidates for 2018 and 2022 actually winning.

You don't need me to tell you how big is the prize at stake. The 22 men who will sit around a table in Zurich this week have a responsibility to the rest of the world to get this right.

The vote on December 2nd must be seen to be squeaky clean. If not, then the members of the Fifa executive committee will be well aware that it's their positions of power, which some of them cherish so much, that will be questioned by football lovers all over the globe.

Even Suresh Kalmadi, the chairman of the Delhi organising committee, admitted to me earlier this week that, at the height of all the problems with the athletes' village, he had feared that some teams would withdraw.

So, it's been quite an adventure over the past month for all of us involved in this project - organisers, team officials, competitors and media.

It's always difficult to know how to measure the success of any event like this. For example is it really fair to compare Delhi with Melbourne, the host city in 2006? Australia has such vast experience in putting on major events, whereas these are India's first multi-sport event since the 1982 Asian Games.

Perhaps a more reasonable question is: Did Delhi manage to do more than the rest of the world predicted?

In the fortnight before the Games began, the athletes' village was described as uninhabitable, a footbridge had collapsed, hardly any tickets had been sold and, above all, there were major concerns about security.

Even a year before, those same fears existed about security, and the building of competition venues was so far behind schedule that even some experts genuinely believed that they would never be ready on time.

Whichever way you look at it, expectations were low. People acknowledged that, as Mr Kulmadi said when I spoke to him, "A Third World Games would present unique challenges."

Now let's look at what actually happened.

Security was by far the most serious concern and I don't think that anybody who has been in Delhi would feel any more could have been done.

Wherever you look around this city there are people in uniforms carrying guns. You can't go anywhere of note without passing through airport-style scanners. More than 100,000 security personnel have been deployed. It's been impressive, and so far very successful.

What about the athletes' village? It was a massive embarrassment for the organisers that some competitors had to delay their arrival in Delhi but all the athletes that I spoke to praised it.

Maybe that has something to do with low expectations, but some veterans of past Games described it as the best that they had seen.

That brings me on to the footbridge and worries about safety around the venues. The collapse of part of a ceiling at the weightlifting arena had also raised concerns.

Swimmer Rebecca Adlington hails Delhi and the Commonwealth Games

Since the Games began, there have been no problems, or at least no injuries anyway. Yes, a scoreboard collapsed at the rugby sevens ground, but that was days before the competition started there.

Most of the venues have actually been very impressive, and, again, the feedback from athletes has been positive.

Finally, to tickets: never before have I seen such a change in atmosphere as a Games has progressed. The first few days were terrible - at times hardly a spectator in sight. But the past few days have been remarkable.

From boxing to hockey to athletics to table tennis, the venues have been packed out. If the reason for taking the Commonwealth Games to Delhi was to encourage the people of India to support new sports, then without any doubt at all these Games have been a resounding success.

I was in the main stadium with Lord Coe on Tuesday night when the Indian women's team won the 4x400 metres relay - the first track gold for India at a Commonwealth Games since 1958.

There wasn't a spare seat in the house, and the noise was deafening. Lord Coe described it to me as "potentially the moment that could change the course of athletics in Asia, the moment that could inspire thousands of people who'd never even seen an athletics track before to get involved".

That was a bold statement, but it illustrated the importance of the bigger picture. As Lord Coe said: "To build a truly global capacity in sport, you have to take it round the world - out of your own backyard. That means taking risks and facing challenges, but it has to be done."

I really do believe that Delhi has exceeded most expectations. Of course there have been problems. I said in a TV report that maybe the slogan for these Games should have been 'Better Late than Never'.

The end result, though, was well worth waiting for. Just to look at the excited faces in the crowds, to see the sense of pride in Indian success, made everything seem so worthwhile.

There's no doubt that Delhi has many lessons to learn from the Commonwealth Games experience, but isn't that part of the point of giving the Games to a city like Delhi?

Personally, I've really enjoyed my time in Delhi. It's my first visit here and it's been far better than I had expected. Maybe I, like some of the athletes who decided to stay away, had been too quick to believe some of the scare stories.

As he walked towards the television camera, which we had set up outside his house for the interview, he looked at me, pointed at his manicured lawn and proclaimed: "This is the finest garden in the whole of Delhi."

When you have faced the level of international criticism that has been hurled in the direction of the Delhi organising committee over the past few months, confidence is probably an essential characteristic.

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Kalmadi admitted to me that there had been times recently when he thought that some countries would boycott the Games. In fact, during the course of our 20-minute interview that was the only time when he showed any sign of fallibility, of accepting that this event had been in any danger of not turning out the way he had planned.

There is no doubt that there are some genuine positives in the organising committee's pluses and minuses columns. For example, during our interview with Kalmadi, we hardly touched on the issue of security. There did not seem to be much point as the security operation here has gone according to plan so far. Considering all the fears that had been raised before the Games - and I do not want to tempt fate by saying too much prematurely - keeping the athletes and spectators safe in Delhi would have to rank as the most important achievement.

It is also true that spectator numbers have risen dramatically during the past few days. The hockey stadium was packed for Sunday's match between India and Pakistan, while the athletics venue was even close to capacity on Sunday evening.

Kalmadi argued that at these Games, like so many others, numbers would continue to pick up after the slow start. He correctly pointed out that there had been many empty seats at the Beijing Olympics. The difference in Delhi, though, is that it has not only been a case of a few empty seats. It has been a case of almost completely empty venues. I have covered many major international events and I have never seen as many spare seats as I did in the first week of these Games.

Kalmadi blamed this on tickets wasted by sponsors and stakeholders but the problem has to be deeper than that. Whatever the ticketing problems, though, the fact that venues are now filling up is another big positive for these Games.

What about the negatives? You have heard them all before... the delay in finishing the athletes' village, the collapse of a footbridge, the problem with the boxing scales that led to the weigh-in being delayed by a day and, yes, those poor ticket sales.

Well, Kalmadi is not in a hurry to admit mistakes were made. I tried to push him into making an apology but sorry is not a word that he feels the need to utter. When I asked him if anybody was owed an apology, he replied: "If some things are wrong then we'll definitely talk about it." That's a long way from sorry.

The sight of empty seats has plagued the first week of the Games. Photo: AFP

Again, it is only fair I should give Kalmadi some defence here. Some areas are not his responsibility, like the footbridge, but some are, like the athletes' village. And his comments about the photos taken inside the village in the days leading up to the Games will be controversial.

Kalmadi claimed that the rooms that had been photographed had never been intended to be used by athletes. He said that they were only for staff. If true, then the world's media has been guilty of serious misrepresentation. However, many of the competing countries will dispute Kalmadi's version of events. The photographs were taken by one nation's delegation here and were taken because that delegation was so appalled by the state of the accommodation being offered.

Kalmadi's comments about Glasgow 2014 can also be considered to be a little undiplomatic. He told me that Glasgow might struggle to match Delhi in terms of scale and in the size of the athletes' village. Many in Glasgow have been worried about the damage that the problems in Delhi could do to the Commonwealth Games brand, so they are unlikely to take kindly to suggestions that these Delhi Games could end up being bigger and better than theirs.

Criticism, though, is something that Kalmadi is clearly capable of taking on the chin. When I asked him for his reaction to being booed at the opening ceremony, he denied he had been booed at all. It all goes back to that confidence. He believes in himself and his dream for Delhi 2010.

Encouragingly for Kalmadi, the people of Delhi seem to be backing that dream in increasing numbers. He might not have managed yet to persuade the rest of the world about the success of these Games but I can confidently predict that he will be greeted by cheers not jeers at Thursday's closing ceremomy.

We all witnessed a spectacular opening ceremony on Sunday. However, it is currently impossible to ignore what is happening in front of my eyes. Journalists are often told to "report it like you see it". Well, I've spent much of the past day looking at row after row of empty seats.

Let us be absolutely fair. No Commonwealth Games could boast a total sell-out of tickets on day one. Some of the first-round events are not always that appealing. If you are a fan of badminton or netball, for example, you might well decide to save your money for the latter stages of the competition.

Never, though, have I seen a major sporting event as badly attended as the beginning of these Delhi Games. I spent much of the first day touring venues, trying to judge the spectator experience.

My honest conclusion can only be that there is currently little interest amongst the Indian public in attending these Games, as hardly anybody turned up to watch at all.

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At the netball venue, there was barely a spectator in sight. If I said that 50 people had paid to get in, I'd probably be being generous. The table tennis and badminton venues were also very empty.

The gymnastics arena can hold 19,000 but needed a tiny fraction of that capacity to cope with demand on day one. Even when the home nation was playing hockey, a popular sport here, the stands remained bare.  

The Prince of Wales went to watch the morning swimming session. Unfortunately, he was joined by only a couple of hundred others, although there were more for the finals later in the day.

It would have been apparent to anybody watching on television just how few people had decided to come to watch the Games. It is impossible to hide empty seats.

Once again, though, I should be fair here to Delhi. There were plenty of empty seats during the Beijing Olympics - although not as many as Delhi - but those Games were considered to be a success.

It is hard to put a finger on why so few people have attended so far. Some tickets can be purchased for as little as 50 rupees, which is about 70 pence. Outlets were limited until recently, though, and there were fears that security would cause lengthy delays.

At least the organisers have acknowledged the problem and claim that the situation will improve. Suresh Kalmadi, the chairman of the organising committee, said at the start of day two of competition: "We have set up ticket box offices in every stadium. There were
queues. I don't think this [issue] will continue for long. There were problems yesterday but we have improved our systems and all the stalls [ticket box offices] are up today."

He also hinted that schoolchildren might be allowed in for free.

I mentioned in my previous blog how I feared that there had been so much negative publicity about these Games during the past few weeks that it would be very hard for Delhi to turn the corner and begin generating a positive flow of news.

The opening ceremony helped the cause but the fuss around the boxing weigh-in - when the scales were found to be inaccurate, forcing a day's delay - emphasise my point.

If the Games had been going well, then negative stories like this might well have been lost. But once things start to go badly, difficulties tend to stand out. People often appear much quicker to criticise when they believe that they are not in the minority.

There is nothing that I would love more than to be able to make my next blog from here a positive one. Delhi still has time. These are India's first Commonwealth Games. If they are to be a success, then the Indian people need to get behind them.

Nearly everybody who has ever visited India will vouch for the fact that the Indian people are special, friendly, helpful, charming and enthusiastic.

Now is the time for the Indian people to prove that they can be passionate sporting spectators. These are Delhi's Commonwealth Games. They are India's. If the Games are to be turned into a success, then I believe the Indian people must play their part.