Organisers of the Rio Olympics are to give away more than 200,000 tickets in a bid to fill gaps in sparsely populated arenas.
With the Opening Ceremony set to take place in the Brazilian city on Friday, organisers told the Reuters news agency that 4.8 million of around 6.1 million tickets on offer had been sold.
Having hit their 1bn Reais (€280bn/$310bn) revenue target, the organisers said they are now in a position to give tickets away – despite having earlier promised not to do so.
The free tickets, for events that have seen poor sales such as golf, hockey and rugby sevens, will be given to underprivileged schoolchildren.
Mario Andrada, Rio 2016 director of communications, said: “There are several sports that are unknown to the youth, like golf and rugby. We teach these kids Olympic values, we teach them how to play these sports.
“The social programme will kick in in the sports we don’t know. In field hockey for example, the kids learn how to play and had a lot of fun. But they never saw a real field hockey game.”
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