Hockey favourite among ticket buyers

Kumar Rakesh

Tribune News Service

Saina Nehwal may be the new rising star on the Indian sporting firmament but her sport, badminton, has been left far behind in popularity among spectators buying tickets of different sports to be held in the Commonwealth Games.

Despite the country’s unimpressive performance in hockey for long, the game is the most popular sport among ticket buyers followed by gymnastic, athletics, swimming, boxing, lawn tennis and then badminton in that order, director, ticketing, Monica Jolly told The Tribune.

However, the sale of tickets for different sports, 17 in total in the CWG, has been on the slower side. CWG Organising Committee officials had hoped that tickets would fly off the shelf once their sale began online and 12 retail outlets from the first week of June. But like most of their hopes, it too proved misplaced. The OC is, though, tightlipped about the overall sale figures, sources said only a small fraction of sport tickets had been sold so far.

Officials , though, expected the sale to pick up in coming days after the sale of real tickets began from August 25 across 30 outlets, which would go up to 46 across the national capital region in the coming days. Until August 25, buyers at retail outlets and CWG website were issued vouchers against their purchase which they could redeem from the outlets after August 25.

Among all events, it is the tickets for opening followed by closing ceremonies which are most sought-after, especially the economy ones. The cheapest opening and closing ceremonies tickets are at Rs 1,000 and Rs 750, respectively, and they are selling like hot cakes.

The sale of tickets for both ceremonies is anywhere between 25 and 30 per cent of the total ticket sale. The figure for hockey ticket sale is not even half of this.

Meanwhile, the officials added that there was no truth in concerns that economy tickets have run of stocks as they put on sale a limited number of tickets and bring out fresh stock from inventory once the earlier lot sells out.

They said they would be selling close to 50,000 tickets for both ceremonies which would be held at the Jawaharlal Nehru stadium, which has a capacity of over 60,000. The remainder seats would be for different reserved categories. As per figures available until last week, an official said they had sold around 10,000 tickets for the opening ceremony and 8,000 for the closing ceremony. “A lot of tickets are still left.”