Premium tickets to go public

More than 70,000 premium Olympic Games tickets will be offered to the Australian public rather than being reserved for the wealthy, Sydney's Olympic chief Michael Knight said on Wednesday.

Knight said he would rather forego money from the premium packages than risk another public backlash over the organisers' ticketing policy.

"When I think back to the way in which the premium ticket packages soured the whole public feeling about ticketing, I don't want to see that happen again," Knight said.

"While this foregoes potentially a few extra million dollars that we could have got out of hawking them to the rich at inflated prices, it's not worth it," Knight said in a statement.

He said 75,000 A category tickets kept aside from last year's disastrous original premium tickets programme would go on sale to the public sale.

"They're some of the hottest tickets around and we will sell them at list price," Knight said.

Organisers came under fire last year after they siphoned off most of the top tickets for wealthy buyers despite promising the public they would have an equal chance of getting a seat.

The 75,000 tickets cover athletics, artistic gymnastics, basketball and soccer.