Paris Olympics struggling to sell out before opening ceremony with 500,000 unsold tickets including for showpiece event
THE OPENING CEREMONY for Paris 2024 is allegedly struggling to sell out as well as the showpiece Olympic event.
The 33rd Summer Olympic Games gets underway on Friday with the opening ceremony.
The huge extravaganza will come to a close in France on August 11.
It is the third time that Paris will host the Summer Games, with the most recent edition coming exactly a century before – but it seems that excitement levels may be on the wane.
That is because “hundreds of thousands of tickets” remain unsold with just days left before it starts.
The Times states that between 500,000 and 600,000 tickets remain unsold.
And, as of yesterday, they included both the men’s and women’s 100m finals.
Both of these two events are traditionally the hottest tickets at the Olympics and are sold out well in advance.
Tickets priced at £249 and £825 are still available for the Sunday 4 August session.
And some for as low as £164 for the Saturday 3 August evening session, which includes the women’s 100m final, are also still for sale.
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Meanwhile, other sports such as cycling, swimming, rowing, rugby sevens, gymnastics and other athletics finals, also had tickets available.
That includes 4,000 seats for the opening ceremony on the River Seine on Friday.
They are priced from £758 to £2,274.
The head of the Paris 2024 organising committee, Tony Estanguet, has denied that the huge amount of unsold tickets shows a lack of interest.
And he highlighted the fact that nearly 9 million other rickets had been sold in total.
That makes it the highest number for an Olympic Games and means that they have also achieved their income target.
Estanguet said: “We will remain prudent and between now and six months ago, we released new ticket opportunities.
“That’s why there are still tickets available one week before, because now we have the final plan of the delivery.
“We are now at 8.8 million tickets sold and we still have 500,000 to 600,000 tickets available.”
Estanguet also defended the fact that Paris had doubled the price of its public transport for the duration of the Games and for the following Paralympics.
He said: “The reason behind this price was because we had to reinforce the transport plan during the Games by 15 per cent more than is usual for this time of year.
“So there is an important cost of this public transfer offer and a decision was made not to impact the [regular] users of the Paris public transport system, but we didn’t want them to have to pay for the cost of the Games.
“We will transfer part of the additional cost to the ones who will use it specifically for the Games. That’s why this was the decision to increase this price.”