Organisers of the Gold Coast Commonwealth Games say they are “delighted” with ticket sales, despite more than 200,000 being unsold just eight days out from the event.
There are tickets available for almost every event, including the opening ceremony, on the GC2018 website.
The 2018 Commonwealth Games in Australia will run from April 4-15.
Resale tickets for sold-out events such as swimming, beach volleyball and rugby sevens are also up for grabs on the GC2018’s fan marketplace as well as sites such as Gumtree.
The Gold Coast 2018 organisers acknowledge that there will be empty seats at some events, and have reportedly continued to push sponsors and international sports federations to take up their ticket allocations to avoid international TV coverage embarrassment.
Many potential ticket-buyers are believed to have been turned off by high accommodation prices and traffic fears, leaving organisers counting on a late sales rush.
Games chairman Peter Beattie has been personally pushing ticket sales on Twitter, urging his 10,000-plus followers and the wider public to support events such as squash, where there are still tickets available for every session.
About 1.2 million tickets were sold for the last Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, with 1.3 million snapped up for the 2006 Melbourne Games.
Beattie insisted he was “absolutely delighted” with the one million tickets sold so far for the Gold Coast Games, which start on Wednesday next week.
“People don’t appreciate the fact that this is the first time we’ve had in this country a regional centre host the Games,” he said.
“In Sydney, or Melbourne, or even Brisbane, you get a walk-up group of people. This was a lot of hard work. We have sold over a million tickets. My target was a million and we got it. I’m absolutely delighted.
“There are still tickets available and I appeal to people to go and have a look, but my view was that as a regional city, if we had sold over a million tickets I would have been happy.
“But we’re not giving up. We want everyone to share in this event.”
Image: KGBO
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