I remember the crowds being a lot lower than the capacity for those games, definitely would rather have 500 people who could definitely be there than have 200 tickets go to waste.
Presumably the late timing of the announcement is due to him being in the USA, would rather we announced the second everything was signed and confirmed rather than waiting for it to leak out like happened in the summer.
Have to say quite impressed with Ian Fergus and the Development sides so far. Seem to have got reasonably far quite quickly and when you listen to him seems like a guy who knows where he wants to take the project.