Championship director Niels de Vos, the British Athletics chief executive,  told the IAAF Special Congress today: "With six months to go I am thrilled to be able to say that we have already sold 550,000 tickets and we are well on the way to selling more tickets than any previous IAAF World Championships.

"We are ready to fulfil our promise when we were awarded the Championships in 2011 that we will have a full Stadium every day, for every session."

The target for London 2017 to surpass is reckoned to have been the 2009 World Championships in Berlin, where the official total of tickets sold over a nine-day period was 417,156.

De Vos told insidethegames: "The final total of tickets sold could well be around 700,000, but that will depend upon a number of factors including the final capacity total of the Stadium."

Cherry Alexander, managing director of London 2017, told Congress delegates that there had been 25,000 registrations ahead of the scheme to provide 4,000 volunteers for the Championships.

That has led to 15,000 applications to become what will be styled "The Runners" in a process that is being overseen by the same company that worked on the London 2012 Gamesmakers project.

A total of 10,000 applicants will be interviewed to find the 4,000 successful candidates.

Alexander, meanwhile, has announced that Jessica Ennis-Hilll, Britain’s Olympic gold and silver heptathlon medallist, will chair the judges panel to decide upon the London 2017 mascot.

A competition being run in conjunction with the popular British television children’s programme Blue Peter will see children entering designs for the mascot, with a decision being expected in April.

Alexander added that London 2017 currently has more than 390,000 subscribers on its database.