With the start of the 1998 Winter Olympics just 23 days away, more than 80 percent of the 1.29 million tickets to events in Nagano, Japan, have been sold.
And Thursday marks the first day that tickets remaining from advance and international sales - including a select number of tickets to the Nagano Games' premier events - are made available in Japan to the general public.NAOC had anticipated 5.3 billion yen in ticket-sales revenue. And even though more than a quarter-million tickets still remain, organizers have already reached their target, the equivalent of $40.3 million.
However, the Nagano Organizing Committee (NAOC) trails its Norway counterpart from four years ago in ticket-sales percentage and international-ticket sales. Ticket sales reached 87 percent for the 1994 Lillehammer Olympics, with international sales there more than double the 90,000 tickets sold by Nagano overseas.
The NAOC fell far short of its hopes to match Lillehammer's total of 200,000 advance tickets sold outside of Norway.
Norway's advantages included its geographic proximity a multitude of European nations and its location in an alpine- and nordic-rich region. Lillehammer also sold a considerable number of tickets to cross-country events, which attract a large following in and around Norway.
By comparison, Japan has been hurt by its extreme distance from both Europe and North America as well as a fear of high costs for foreign visitors.
Tickets are available in every sport, including 500 for opening ceremonies, 150 for the gold-medal men's hockey game, 100 for the men's figure-skating free program and 50 for the women's figure-skating free program.
Most of the tickets still remaining are to cross-country skiing and ice hockey events. Some 80,000 of the 330,000 total hockey tickets are available, primarily to women's games and the men's preliminary games feature second-tier teams such as Italy, France, Slovakia and Kazakstan.
Some 73,000 tickets - or nearly a third of Nagano's available number - are for cross country in the mountain resort of Hakuba.
Approximately 1.29 million tickets were printed for Nagano's scheduled 68 events, with prices ranging from 2,000 yen to 35,000 yen - or $15 to $270.
Tickets are still available to U.S. residents through the official sales agency, Cartan.
The Nagano Olympics is the first to offer a discount - 50 percent - to tickets purchased by schoolchildren ages 6 to 14.
Prior to Lillehammer and Nagano, average ticket sales for recent Winter Olympics had been 70 percent. No other Olympics had sold more than 80 percent of its event tickets.