London 2012 tickets mistakenly oversold: Organisers

Organisers of the London 2012 Olympics on Wednesday admitted they had mistakenly oversold tickets for synchronised swimming sessions, leading to thousands being offered tickets to other events.

Some 10,000 tickets were meant to go on offer in the second round of sales for four of the sessions in the aquatics centre but 20,000 were made available due to human error, organisers revealed.

Officials contacted around 3,000 ticket-holders and offered them access to more prestigious events -- including the men's 1,500m athletics final -- that they had previously applied for unsuccessfully.

"As a result of finalising the seating configurations in our venues and reconciling the millions of Olympic and Paralympic ticket orders against the seating plans for around 1,000 sporting sessions, we have discovered an error in seats available in four synchronised swimming sessions," said a London 2012 spokesperson.

"In December we contacted around 3,000 customers who had applied for tickets in the four sessions during the second round sales process and we are exchanging their synchronised swimming tickets for tickets in other sports," added the spokesperson.

The extra tickets will come from a batch of one million contingency tickets that will go on sale in May after seating plans for the venues have been finalised.