Tickets for the Athens 2004 Summer Olympic Games are now on sale and can be booked by residents of the 15-country European Union as well as sports fans in Iceland, Norway and Liechenstein through the Internet for the next month. A total of 2.3 million tickets are available to non-EU residents but they can only book through their respective country’s national Olympic Committees.
But it seems that Australians will have to wait at least two weeks to enter a lottery.
Anne Meacham, general manager of Sportsworld Pacific, the official Australian ticket outlet, confirmed Australians should have been able to book tickets yesterday, but said delays in vital information coming from the Athens organizing committee were to blame.
Applications will not be processed in order of priority.
Athens organizers said that more than 50 per cent of the tickets will cost a third less than at the 2000 Sydney Winter Games. Tickets for the most popular events such as swimming and athletics finals cost from $11 to $33. The top price for a sports event is $327 while tickets for the opening ceremony range from $109 to $1,035.
A lottery will be held in the event that demand exceeds supply. A second round of orders is to be launched in October if any tickets are left after June 12.
Mary Manolopoulou, Athens 2004 ticketing manager, said “preliminary indications show a very high demand on tickets. National Olympic Committees have already requested a significantly higher amount of tickets of what was allocated to them for the Sydney Games”.