Ticket register will create giant sports fan database

Since last summer more than two million people have registered for Olympic tickets. Those who have signed gain little advantage.

The process is more about helping organisers to profile their customers and prevent a website crash - as happened at the Beijing Games ticket launch - when sales start on March 15.

But the electronic wave of personal details, which will eventually form the largest database of British sports fans, is a gem for those advocating the need for the Olympic stadium to be preserved as a home for athletics after the Games. The pro-athletics lobby has 1.7 million reasons to be cheerful, as that is the number of Britons who have registered - three out of four - who want to watch track and field in 2012.

Games organisers propose to sign over for nothing the names and email addresses of this vast potential fanbase to the governing body of athletics after 2012. To conform with the data protection rules they will have to check with those registered first, but given permission, the sky's the limit.

UK Athletics, which naturally favours West Ham's athletics/football stadium share plan and has entered a formal partnership with the club, will use the information to sell seats at the stadium, where it has earmarked a dozen track and field events each summer.

Its chairman Ed Warner talks of the possibility of "cross-promotion" of tickets with the other members of the Hammers' consortium, concert promoter Live Nation, which counts Madonna and Jay-Z in its star stable, and Essex County Cricket Club.

Warner has been scathing about Tottenham Hotspurs' proposal to tear up the track and improve Crystal Palace as an athletics venue instead. So it is unclear whether the innovative marketing scheme would work with the north London club.

Athletics has proved most popular among those who have registered for tickets so far, ahead of swimming, cycling, gymnastics and diving. All 26 Olympic sports will receive the data after the Games to help them boost club membership and ticket sales.

The stadium saga seems set to run as the Olympic Park Legacy Company has postponed the decision on its future while it discusses further details with the clubs, thought to centre on financial guarantees being offered by West Ham owners David Gold and David Sullivan. Because of their superior legacy plans, Hammers remain what one senior source calls the "default" option if their numbers stack up.