Many tickets for 2024 Paris Olympics still unsold a day before the Games
Paris — Just one day before the 2024 Paris Olympics opening ceremony, more than a million tickets to Olympic events were still unsold, including many for Friday's first-of-its-kind outdoor ceremony on the Seine river itself. Olympic organizers had set lofty ticket sale ambitions, and they have met some of them.
Tony Estanguet, a three-time French Olympic canoeing champion and president of the Paris 2024 Olympic Organizing Committee, touted the record-breaking sale of 8.8 million tickets during a news conference on Sunday.
But there are many, many more left on offer, and still more being put up for sale every day even as many current ticket holders struggle to offload seats they no longer want.
In an attempt to ramp up sales, new tickets are being added daily to the official Paris 2024 ticketing app and website.
Many people purchased tickets early, but found their plans had changed as the Games grew closer.
For some it was the disappointment of finding they'd been allocated tickets for events or to watch teams that they didn't have enough interested in. For some locals who purchased tickets, it was the frustration of all the disruption caused by the construction and security around their city that has driven them away.
In an attempt to recoup costs, many of those people have turned to the official ticket app — the only authorized resale market for Olympic event tickets. According to an analysis of the platform conducted by the Financial Times, active resale listings shot up from 180,000 to 270,000 over the past month alone.
Resellers may have expected Olympics fans to quickly snatch up their unwanted tickets, but they've been struggling to sell them at all.
The app prohibits ticket holders from setting their own resale prices, including at lower rates, and new tickets offered on the official ticketing website for the same events can be less expensive than resale offerings.
With no way to incentivize buyers, resellers on the official site have been left in a frustrating state of limbo, and with just a day to go and a glut of tickets still available, it's raised some concern about the prospect of Olympians looking up to see empty seats.