Games boss Tony Estanguet acknowledged this “error” on Wednesday and assured that he would contact the buyers in order to “find the best solution”.
The ticket office for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games is definitely still being talked about. And the organizers would, once again, have done well. As the second phase of ticket sales (single tickets this time) opened on Thursday, May 11, the day since which more than a million tickets have been sold, an error was detected in eight athletics sessions put up for sale, recognized, Wednesday, May 17, Tony Estanguet with The Team.
“We realized that there were errors in eight athletics sessionssaid the boss of Paris 2024, Tony Estanguet, at the headquarters of the Organizing Committee (Cojop). There are more than 760 sessions on sale in this second phase of ticketing. On these eight athletics sessions, there was a programming error because the calendar has changed and it has not been updated. The online version was an earlier version of the International Federation (World Athletics).” An error that goes all the more badly given the selling prices for athletics, which can go up to 980 euros for a place for a final session at the Stade de France.
“If we go into a little bit of detail, on what I could understand, for three sessions it’s rather good news because they will have more proofs than they thought they were buying. But there are five sessions where there are indeed less tests”, added the boss of the Games. For the time being, the Cojop has not yet revealed which sessions were concerned, with the exception of two of them: those including the finals of the women’s 5000m and 3000m steeplechase. These having been scheduled on another slot by World Athletics are therefore no longer part of the announced sessions. If no figure has been advanced, the number of tickets concerned would be “limit”, according to Paris 2024.
“Find the best solution”
For Tony Estanguet, this error “is not a first. The ticketing specialists know that it can happen, it is also written on the site that the programs can be brought to evolve. It could still be the case, even if we don’t hope so, because for us it’s a real challenge every time. We will treat this with a lot of attention and rigor”, he still justified. The boss of Paris 2024 assured “to write” to buyers and “see with them to find the best solution”. “We will inform all the people concerned by these sessions, he said again. We apologize, we’re really sorry.”
Since its launch, the ticket office has not been spared by criticism, between prices that are too high, places that are too few in number and sports that are very quickly inaccessible. However, while 3.25 million tickets had found takers during the first phase (the packs) in February, one million places were sold in just 48 hours out of the 1.5 million tickets put on sale for this second phase.