The world’s best athletes will descend on London this summer for the world para and athletic championships.
The Olympic Stadium in east London will be the venue once again, five years on from the unforgettable 2012 Olympic Games.
Hundreds of thousands of spectators will flock to the stadium to see the world’s fastest man Usain Bolt one final time before he retires, as well as get behind British favourites Sir Mo Farah and Greg Rutherford.
Tickets for London 2017 launched last year, with innovative pricing across all sessions throughout the championships relating to iconic moments in the sport’s history. For example, the ‘Bolt’ ticket is £9.58 – 9.58 Being Bolt’s world record 100m time – and will be the price of every child’s ticket throughout the championships.
In charge of such initiatives and getting as many spectators through the doors this summer is Georgia Bekyra, Head of Ticketing Operations at UK Athletics. Georgia was a recent visitor to UCFB where she spoke with BA (Hons) Stadium & Events Management students on what it takes to put on a major sporting event anywhere in the world.
With her previous experience also featuring work at two Olympic Games and at Greek football giants Panathinaikos, Georgia is well versed in what it takes to make an event a success.
Speaking to UCFB, Georgia said: “It’s important to have a theoretical and academic background but for me one of the main things is to have passion. How much do you want to follow up, learn new things, not stay still and try and progress as much as you can?”
She added that after showing you’re committed and willing to work hard, it’s then about doing it for real. For students looking to have a career putting on big events, expect long hours.
Georgia said: “When you talk about events you’re talking about long, long hours for a number of days. In football there are matches every three days, during an athletics world championships you have ten days of double sessions.
“There’s no way around it, you have to work hard. You need to be able to do that and you need to be able to have an open mind about how much it takes to make it. It’s not an easy thing to put an event on.”
