| Tickets 1952
Following the usual practice the Organising
Committee decided to offer half of the tickets for sale abroad. The uncertain
world situation during the years preceding the Games and the inflatory
trend evident in Finnish economic life meanwhile made the question of ticket
sales extraordinarily difficult and held up important decisions.
At the beginning of 1952 the Ticket Committee
expanded into a Ticket Department comprising:
a Box
Office for domestic sales, with sub-offices for allocations, ticket sales
and mailing and
a Box
Office for sales abroad.
Single and Day Tickets
The bulk of the tickets were for a single
occasion. Day tickets were printed solely for athletics, fencing, shooting,
the modern pentathlon and equestrian events outside the Olympic Stadium.
No series tickets were sold to the public. In the top left corner of the
ticket was the symbol of the sport in question, below that the date, the
stand and seat number and the price in dollars (on those sold in Finland
the price-category only). On the right was a clock-face with the hands
set at the time appointed for the event. A plan printed on the back of
the ticket showed how the stands could be reached.
Tickets were printed in ten colours as follows:
The idea behind this use of colour was that it
would facilitate traffic guidance in the central Olympic area. In practice
too much importance was seen to have been attached to traffic. It would
have been more appropriate to distinguish differently priced tickets with
colours.
Printing
The tickets were printed by the note-printing
press of the Bank of Finland on banknote paper with a rose-coloured watermark,
which made forgery difficult. Printing began in July 1951 and went on for
four months. The note-printing press kept the tickets in its own safe custody,
releasing batches for distribution as ordered. Tickets to the preliminary
hockey, basketball and football rounds and the extra gymnastics competition
on July 19th were printed at private commercial presses immediately before
the Games. The Municipality of Hämeenlinna printed additional tickets
for the modern pentathlon swimming event. These so-called »occasional
tickets» were simpler in design. No tickets were printed for the
yachting competitions, as it was decided that no »stands» could
be arranged from which spectators could follow the races closely.
The total printings at the note-printing press
of the Bank of Finland were 2 049 096 tickets. Printings by private firms
totalled 345 003 tickets. The over-all total was thus 2 394 099 tickets.
(Source document: Official
Report 1952, page 164) |
