Although there are still forty per cent of tickets available for the Turin 2006 Winter Olympic Games, Turin 2006 organizers say they are confident the remainder will be snapped up before the Winter Games begin in 71 days.
Luciano Barra, deputy chief executive of Turin 2006, told members of the European Olympic Committee Saturday that 30,000 were sold in a November surge and that marketing tools were beginning to bear fruit. “There is not a culture of buying tickets in advance in Italy. So these figures represent something of a success”.
Speedskating is the only sport to be sold out, tickets for curling are nearly 95 per cent gone, and luge and skeleton are the two least-popular sports, both with 79 per cent of their tickets still available.
Barra said the unsold tickets were mainly in the preliminary rounds, with finals in all sports sold out.
Barra said he was surprised at the popularity of curling, which has 16 days of competition in a 3,000-seat arena. “This is in the village and many are coming from Switzerland and Britain here”. Ice hockey is another popular sport with more than 150,000 tickets sold.
Figure skating is the other most popular sport with only 3.3 per cent of tickets left.
The Opening and Closing Ceremonies haven’t sold well, with 43.3 per cent of tickets to the Opening Ceremony and 54.5 per cent of tickets to the Closing Ceremony still available.
So far Turin 2006 has sold 540,000 of the one million tickets available.
