Paris 2024 breaks ticket sales record

The Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games have set a new record for ticket sales as 12.1 million were purchased for the events, which ended with the latter’s Closing Ceremony yesterday.

Organising Committee president Tony Estanguet said that more than 9.5 million tickets were sold for the Olympics while the Paralympics sold 2.5 million.

The figure beats the previous record which was set by London 2012 with a total of 10.9 million tickets sold.

These Games have been “a success in terms of audience”, both in stadiums and on television, with a “spectacular image” of the French capital, said Estanguet.

Estanguet noted that Saturday’s (September 7) Paralympic athletics session sold more tickets than any session of the same Olympic competition and that more tickets were sold for Paralympic swimming than its Olympic counterpart.

In France alone, 45 million people watched a Paralympic sport on television and five million watched live as the French men’s team won blind football gold.

“Paris 2024 is quite simply the new benchmark for the Paralympic Games, from every point of view,” said International Paralympic Committee president Andrew Parsons in a press conference.

For a long time, Paris 2024 Paralympic ticket sales were stuck at around the one million mark but the Olympic effect kicked in to spur sales.

More than one million Paralympic tickets were still available by the time the Olympic Games had concluded on August 11.

Organisers were not worried though and predicted the sharp rise in sales that led to the final figure of 2.5 million sales.