Organisers of next year's Olympic Games in Paris were under pressure on Tuesday to reconsider the cost of tickets during the two-week extravaganza following a warning from top athletics administrator Sebastian Coe that high prices could leave embarrassing gaps in stadiums.
Coe, who heads World Athletics, said he feared fans and the families of athletes might stay away from the venues in the French capital.
The costliest tickets on the official Paris 2024 website available for the athletics sessions at the Stade de France are priced at 980 euros though tickets for other sessions can be purchased for 90 euros.
“These are going to be the most expensive ticket prices in an athletics arena that we have witnessed at an Olympic Games,” said Coe.
"These are difficult balances for any organising committee. But if I am wearing my World Athletics hat, I don’t want fans being costed out of the stadium and I certainly don’t want athletes and their families being costed out of the stadium."
Coe, who was chief of the organising committee for the 2012 Olympic in London, fired his warning on the back of his own organisation's success at the world athletics championships in Budapest where the newly built National Athletics Stadium on the banks of the river Danube enjoyed night after summer night of sell-out crowds.
Aim
“The most important element here is you want fans in the stadiums. You want fans within affordable prices. I know the challenge on a budget – 25 per cent of our budget in London was tickets.
“Our ticket strategy was built three years before the Games. We knew more about our fans at the end of that. We had some expensive tickets in there but we also had a lot at affordable prices.
“If you look over the course of an athlete’s career, there are very few athletes that are able to sit down and say they got in commercial sponsorship more than what their families put in.
“Most are sitting there at the end of a 15-year career and saying it was my family that bore the brunt of what I did, in terms of funding time, commitment and all the things."
Coe's comments came as Paris organisers preened themselves during a ceremony to celebrate the end of refurbishments on the Stade Yves-du-Manoir stadium in Colombes, north-western Paris.
The venue – which was the main stadium at the 1924 Olympics in Paris – underwent a two-year revamp and will, as the only venue to have been used at the previous Games in the city, host the Olympic hockey tournaments.
Success
Georges Siffredi, president of the Hauts de Seine region, which owns the complex, told RFI: "To be hosting the 2024 Games again 100 years later and to be the first site to be delivered is something that we can be proud of.
"It's a legendary stadium that has been reborn. It got a bit run down over the years and needed some work and the 2024 Olympics were an opportunity to completely renovate the place."
The hockey tournaments will start on 27 July and end on 9 August – two days before the closing ceremony.
"I want the Games to be successful," added Coe. "And as somebody who has delivered an Olympic Games I am critically aware that it is a very complex piece of project management that demands the collective work of a whole range of stakeholders, including government agencies and intelligence services. It is complicated.
“We have made the point that these prices are lumpy," Coe added. "In Budapest we had very affordable price tickets. Tokyo [2025 World Championships] we will make sure we get the same as well.
“There are always going to be premium tickets, but it is important that our stadiums are full of people that love our sport, not people that can afford to get to an Olympics.”
Paris organisers say nearly they want to rake in around 1.25 billion euros from ticket sales which along with cash from the International Olympic Committee and sponsors should cover the 4 billion euro cost of the Games.
Tony Estanguet, head of the Paris Olympics organising committee, has repeatedly defended ticket prices.
"In volume and price, there are very affordable tickets that have been put on sale and bought," said the former Olympic gold medallist during a round of ticket sales in May.
