Paris 2024 organisers have been forced to cut by half the number of tickets available for the Olympics’ opening ceremony over security fears.
France’s Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin has said that a total of 326,000 tickets will now be allowed for the Olympic Games opening ceremony on July 26. That is around half of the amount originally planned.
Exact numbers were revealed for the first time with Darmanin telling the Senate that there will be 104,000 people who have paid for a ticket on the lower bank of the river Seine, where the event is taking place.
A further 222,000 people will be on the higher banks with free tickets while an estimated 200,000 people will be able to watch the parade ticketless from buildings that overlook the river. An additional 50,000 are expected to watch from fan zones in the city.
Organisers have decided to scale back the ceremony due to concerns from French security services about controlling such large crowds as well as the risk of terror attacks. Tourists will not be allowed to watch the opening ceremony along the river Seine for free in a bid to improve security.
The free tickets will not be available to the public through an open registration as previously planned but will be invitation only.
“To manage crowd movement, we can’t tell everyone to come,” Darmanin said, as reported by the Associated Press.
“For security reasons that everyone understands, notably the terrorist threat of recent weeks, we are obliged to make it free but contained.”
Those invited will then need to undergo security checks and will receive QR codes to pass barriers.
Local town councils and sports federations will be two main authorities that can hand out invitations.
Despite the cutbacks, it is still set to break records in terms of attendance as every previous Summer Olympic curtain raiser has taken place in a stadium.
The Paris 2024 Organising Committee had initially imagined up to two million people in attendance while Darmanin referred to 600,000 tickets to be up for sale in 2022.
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