Nearly half the tickets for Milan Cortina Olympics still unsold with 2 months to go

ROME AP Construction on the main hockey arena is still not finished Spectator and media areas at the controversial sliding venue also need to be completed And with exactly two months to go to the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics there is another major area that local organizers are concentrating on only slightly more than half of the million tickets for the games have been sold As the torch relay began in Rome on Saturday just over tickets had been sold While sales abroad are meeting expectations interest among Italians remains low That s normal The local fans get interested closer and I think the beginning of the torch relay will be a very major moment for people realizing that local organizing committee CEO Andrea Varnier informed The Associated Press moments before the relay began A Black Friday promotion last week included three days of discounts on tickets And purchasers of both Olympics and Paralympics tickets have the chance to get lift passes for eight euros valid at every ski area in Lombardy between Dec - This week more tickets for the Feb opening ceremony at the San Siro stadium and the men s hockey gold medal tournament on Feb in Milan were put on sale We had selected tickets on the territory a couple of days ago and they were sold out in in just a couple of hours Varnier stated So there is interest If past precedence is any indicator the atmosphere was memorable at the Turin Winter Games the last time Italy hosted an Olympics Still organizers would have hoped for more demand after the last Winter Games in Beijing in were held mostly without fans because of the coronavirus pandemic Varnier pointed out that sales have been strong at the in recent months opened Milan Cortina store in front of the city s cathedral Piazza del Duomo People are really going in and buying our merchandise which is also a good sign he stated Hockey arena has to be ready As for the Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena the new -seat venue on the outskirts of Milan the scheduled test event for next week had to be pushed back to January We knew about the delays of the hockey arena and we are working with it but now we are following the right pace Varnier noted It has to be ready Next week the secondary hockey venue that has been set up in the Rho Fiera convention center will be tested by hosting under- world championship games Multiple opening ceremonies These games will be held across a large swath of northern Italy and athlete parades for the opening ceremony will also be held simultaneously in Cortina d Ampezzo Livigno and Predazzo besides Milan It is quite an effort it s the first time ever Varnier disclosed It s a very major message to have the athletes also staying in the mountain Villages to be able to participate in the ceremony This was very well received by the NOCs National Olympic Committees Also the communities are very happy to have a piece of the ceremonies in their towns Andrew Dampf is at https x com AndrewDampf AP Olympics https apnews com hub milan-cortina- -winter-olympics Source