Record 9.5 million tickets sold for Paris Olympics

Paris 2024 broke the record for the most tickets sold for an Olympic Games, with 9.5 million tickets sold, helping to ensure the event was entirely privately funded, unlike what will happen at the Paralympics.

“Achieving our ticket sales target allows us to ensure that the budget is balanced and financed entirely with private money,” congratulated Organising Committee President Tony Estangue.

Thus, the old record of 8.3 million tickets for the 1996 Atlanta Games in the USA was largely broken, which is a fundamental fact for the fact that the unification of the Olympic and Paralympic Games was 95% financed by private funds.

“It is in the Paralympic Games that we actually receive a contribution of public money,” Estanguet said of the event, which will take place from August 28 to September 8, also in Paris.

The leader recalled times when the Organising Committee was heavily criticised for its “idealism and boldness” in organising the event, such as the opening ceremony, which was held outside the Olympic stadium for the first time, for which he praised the Games as “beyond expectations” and a cause for “pride and happiness”.

He spoke about the importance of holding sports activities in the most iconic places of Paris, where several temporary facilities have been built, such as the Place de la Concorde, the Champ de Mars or the Trocadero, among others.

“The public noticed this audacity, which made the Games even better than we expected. It was a marathon in which we had to endure pessimists who predicted a catastrophe and the country’s inability to organize such major events,” he emphasized.

In conclusion, he expressed confidence that “France is capable of anything”, including staging “the most beautiful Games in history”, noting that he had received messages of “satisfaction and congratulations from all over the world”.