France faces glut of unwanted Olympics tickets

The number of unwanted Paris Olympics tickets available for resale has hit more than a quarter of a million, as lack of demand increases concerns just days before Friday’s opening ceremony that many athletes will compete against a backdrop of empty seats.

The number of listings rose to 271,637 on Tuesday, up from about 180,000 a month ago, a Financial Times analysis of the official resale site shows. The most expensive offers on the resale site are for the opening ceremony, with the best seats priced at €2,97.

Fans wanting to attend the summer games were obliged to buy blocks of tickets for three separate events during the first wave of sales. Organisers said any unwanted tickets could then be resold through the official channel.

However, a lack of demand in the secondary market has left many holding tickets they cannot sell, while organisers have continued to release more tickets. Tickets must be resold at face value, but buyers must pay an additional 10 per cent booking fee, while sellers are hit with a 5 per cent charge.

Users of online forum Reddit have complained about being unable to find buyers for their unwanted tickets. “There are so many athletics tickets on the resale platform,” wrote one user. “I’m feeling bummed that I might be stuck with (good!) tickets. At this point it’s a sunk cost.”

Tony Estanguet, chief executive of the Paris organising committee, said on Sunday that there were still hundreds of thousands of unsold tickets available, in addition to those listed on the official resale site.

Paris 2024 said its approach to ticket sales had been a “major success”, pointing to the 8.85mn “sold or allocated” — an Olympic record. About 250,000 tickets had been exchanged via the resale site, the organisers added.

“Given the experience of previous editions, we know fans will have opportunities to purchase tickets throughout the Games,” the organising committee added.

Fans can still buy tickets for prestige events such as the men’s 100 metres final, starting at €295 per person with a restricted view, rising to €980 for Category A seats. About 4,000 tickets, beginning at €900, are still available for Friday night’s opening ceremony, during which a flotilla of boats will ferry athletes down the Seine river in front of a planned audience of about 320,000 spectators.

Unsold tickets, especially for early rounds, are a regular feature of sporting mega-events, including football World Cups and Olympics. Just over 80,000 of the ticket resale offers listed are for football matches, which begin on Wednesday and will be played at stadiums across France.

More than 1mn tickets were still available on the eve of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games. At the most recent games in Tokyo, spectators were barred from attending because of Covid-19 restrictions.

Although organisers expect 15mn visitors during the Games, hotels and apartment owners looking to capitalise on Olympic demand have already been forced to temper their expectations. Many began lowering prices earlier this year to drum up bookings, while airlines have warned that the Games had suppressed the usual summer appetite for holiday trips to the French capital. Meanwhile, millions of Parisians are expected to flee the city during the Games.

Estanguet, a three-time Olympic gold medal-winning canoeist, said he was “not preoccupied at all” with locals’ level of enthusiasm, pointing to the “millions of people” who had watched the Olympic torch procession across France in recent weeks.

“We’re very confident to say that it’s going to be a wonderful and popular party,” he said. “We will draw our conclusions after the Games.”