Paris 2024 Olympics begins with more than 1m tickets still unsold
More than 1m tickets for the Paris 2024 Olympics remain unsold despite being priced as low as £13 after the Games got underway in France on Wednesday.
General admission tickets for blue-riband athletics events – including the men’s and women’s 100m finals – are still available on the official ticketing platform.
All but one of the 17 athletics sessions at the Stade de France were on sale at the time of writing, with some costing as little as £20 (€24).
The cheapest remaining tickets for the Games start at £13 (€15) and include men’s football matches involving the hosts, which are being played in Marseille. Medal sessions are still available for just £29 (€35).
Seats are still on offer at the men’s 100m final on Sunday 4 August for £105 (€125) and the women’s 100m final on Saturday 3 for £164 (€195).
Tennis, being staged at Roland Garros, sold out but tickets are still available on the official Paris 2024 resale platform from as little as £22 (€26).
Games organisers told City PM they had “sold or allocated” 8.85m tickets, out of 10m available overall.
“For the first time in the history of the Games, all ticketing sales were handled centrally by the Organising Committee rather than locally via the National Olympic Committees,” Paris 2024 said.
“This approach has been a major success, demonstrated by the fact that Paris 2024 broke the record of 8.3m tickets sold or allocated, previously held by Atlanta 1996.
“There are still opportunities to purchase tickets via our ticketing website. Given the experience from previous editions, we know fans will have opportunities to purchase tickets throughout the Games.”
Paris 2024 chiefs previously played down concerns about empty seats at the first Olympics since Tokyo 2020, where spectators were shut out due to the Covid-19 pandemic.