Organisers of the 2019 Copa America football tournament have expressed concerns over slow tickets sales, with only 65 per cent of all passes gone so far.
The competition, run by South America’s football ruling body CONMEBOL, kicks off tomorrow (Friday) in host country Brazil and will run through to July 7.
The local media has widely reported that fewer than 3,000 tickets have been shifted for the matches at Belo Horizonte’s 64,000-seat Mineirao Stadium between Bolivia and Venezuela on June 22 and Ecuador and Japan on June 24, although organisers have not confirmed this figure.
They did confirm, however, that this weekend’s matchup between Argentina and Colombia has sold out.
Agberto Guimaraes, the director of operations for Copa America, said that it has targeted a 70-per-cent uptake of its one million available tickets.
He noted that there was a peak in ticket sales last weekend, when 19,000 tickets were allocated. Some were distributed to children served by social institutions in each host city.
Guimaraes told journalists in a press conference at the Morumbi stadium, where hosts Brazil will open the tournament against Bolivia on Friday: “If we look at the whole, we are moving toward successful sales. In every product you have items that are highly valued and some that do not draw the same interest. We hope that from then onward, with the ball on the pitch, there is more interest for those two matches.”
Guimaraes added that organisers have contacted the local government about the possibility to let school children fill some of the potentially empty seats.
Image: Ben Sutherland
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