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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Olympic Ticket Requests Offer Surprises

Associated Press

Tickets to the prime events of the 1996 Olympics, including the finals for basketball, gymnastics and diving, are expected to be oversold and will go only to those whose orders survive a lottery.

And, in a surprise to the organizers, many lesser-known sports, including two-thirds of the badminton sessions, more than half the fencing and almost all the table tennis, are projected to be oversold.

The Atlanta Committee for the Olympic Games said a third of the 540 sessions are expected to be “oversubscribed,” meaning ticket applications will go into a lottery before being picked for processing. The lottery was developed to give orders received in the first 60 days an equal chance when orders outstrip supply.

Ticket officials emphasized the events are not yet sold out. Orders received by June 30 will end up in the lottery. After that, orders will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis, and orders for oversubscribed events will be rejected.

The list of 171 sessions likely to be oversold includes most for which tickets were expected go quickly, like the opening and closing ceremonies. But it also includes many not usually regarded as popular sports.

For example, four of the 32 baseball games are projected to be oversold, as are six of seven cycling sessions, 15 of 22 badminton, seven of 12 fencing and 15 of 17 table tennis.

“Interest is high and we continue to be amazed by the quantity of orders and the strong interest in every sport,” said Scott Anderson, ACOG’s ticket chief.”That’s not a well-known sport. In my speeches that I give I haven’t found anyone that can even list the five sports that are in the modern pentathlon and yet we’ve had tremendous demand for it,” he said.

He said ACOG has received 160,288 orders averaging $1,229 and 16.4 tickets each.