The Paris Olympics opening ceremony is nearly upon us yet more than a quarter of a million tickets are still available as fans react to ticket prices.
ADVERTISEMENTThe number of unsold tickets for the Paris Olympics has raised concern about the financial impact it will have on organisers of the event, with some 600,000 tickets reportedly still up for grabs.
An original analysis done by the Financial Times shows listings on resale sites rose to 270,465 on Monday 22 July, a jump from 180,000 a month ago.
The most expensive tickets cost €2,970 with fans on social media also expressing outrage at the prices.
"Not surprised by this. Tickets miles too expensive," one person wrote on social media platform X, while others noted it was too late to plan a trip despite prices now coming down.
Tony Estanguet, the Paris 2024 president and three-time Olympic canoeist champion, repeatedly dismissed that the number of available tickets reflects a lack of enthusiasm, according to The Telegraph.
Estanguet said it isn’t unusual to have empty seats at big stadium events like football, in 2012 at the London Olympics, 264,000 tickets went unsold.
At this stage, Estanguet noted that Paris is doing much better than Rio in 2016 when Brazil organisers worked just a week before the games to shift 1.3 million tickets and highlighted that many of the tickets still on sale were available thanks to “contingency”.
The organisers had 10 million tickets at the start for the games but did not release them all at once. Instead, they released more on sale slowly. “That’s why there are still tickets available one week before because now we have the final plan of the delivery,” Estanguet said in a press conference.
Paris has sold 8.8 million tickets so far, Estanguet also noted.
