did you get the tickets you wanted - or at all? (Pic: Luke Agbaimoni)

Most Londoners who applied for tickets to the 2012 Olympics should have discovered whether their application via public ballot was successful.

Games organisers said they were on track to debit accounts by midnight on Tuesday. They will then be contacting people whose cards have failed until 10 June, and people will be told which tickets they have on or before 24 June.

With 20 million applications nationwide for the 6.6 million tickets available there is likely to widespread disappointment. The system, which has received criticism, takes money from people’s accounts before they know which event they have tickets for.

About 1.8 million people applied for the tickets, each requesting an average of 11 tickets which accounted for the 20 million applications. Popular events have been massively over subscribed, especially the men’s 100m final for which there were one million applications for 20,000 available seats.

A second round of sales will take place in late June on a first-come first-served basis, with those who were unsuccessful in the public ballot being offered first chance to buy. They will then go on general sale.

A London 2012 spokesman said: “Applicants who have been unsuccessful and have got nothing in the first round will get priority in the second round.

“The reality is that many people will not be lucky the first time around but.”

In total, 8.8 million tickets are available for the Games, about half of the remaining 2.2 million tickets not available to the public have been issued to national Olympic committees, with the other half split between sponsors, the International Olympic Committee, guests and hospitality partners.

London 2012 is looking to make £500m from ticket sales as part of bid to raise £2bn through private means. A further two million tickets will be available later this year for the Paralympic Games.

London boroughs will be given £50,000 each, totalling £1.6m across all 32 boroughs, to decorate their streets with flags, banners and bunting for the Games.

The funds will be provided by the Mayor of London’s office to help spread the “look and feel” of the Olympics.

Labour MP Ian Austin is pressing ministers to clarify who will receive the 9,000 tickets that the Government bought. Officials said 3,000 people who had helped in staging 2012 would pay face value for the tickets while others would go to dignitaries and VIPs as part of efforts to “showcase” the UK.