The chief executive of the Vancouver Organising Committee for the 2010 Winter Olympics has revealed that ice hockey ticket sales brought in C$345 million in the five weeks after their release.
The Vancouver Sun newspaper reports that John Furlong said, “When we put the tickets out there for the public, we were astonished at the interest. We took 144,000 orders for 4,000 gold-medal hockey tickets we had for sale.”
Furlong said that in Salt Lake City in 2002 the tickets were available for nine weeks and brought in only C$78 mllion.
Furlong also said the Vancouver organising committee now has 98 per cent of funds needed to stage the games, that construction was completed on athletic facilities, but that it was concerned there may not be enough hotel accommodation for all visitors to the Games.
“We have the unique challenge of having far too many people wanting to come than we have accommodation for,” he said. “We are now developing a strategy so that every head has a pillow in Vancouver.”
Furlong made the comments in a speech to the Canadian Club of Ottawa at the Fairmont Chateau Laurier on Tuesday. The speech was interrupted at one point by a protester chanting, “No Olympics on native stolen land.”
