Figure skating tickets go on sale next week

All-event ticket packages for the 2010 U.S. Figure Skating Championships in Spokane will go on sale at 10 a.m. May 31.

The all-event package costs $595 and includes a ticket to at least 16 skating competitions between Jan. 15 and Jan. 23, 2010.

Tickets for the Jan. 24 Exhibition of Champions show, which will feature the 2010 champions 18 days before they compete at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, B.C., will be sold separately at $75 a seat.

The all-event package costs $100 more than the championships in Spokane in 2007, but the competition also will run two days longer.

“Like last time, there is a payment plan available,” said Toby Steward, of skating promoter Star USA. “You pay an initial payment, and then they charge you three or four other payments until you make the total.”

Included in the 2010 package is a pass to all practice sessions at Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena.

And unlike last time, “sll the competitions and all the practices are at the Arena,,” Steward said. “That’s going to be great for fans.”

If individual tickets remain after the all-event package sale, they will be sold shortly before the championships.

“The pressure on the ticket inventory is going to be much greater this time,” Steward said. “Based on history, in an Olympic year, and when the Olympics are pretty much in your backyard, there is going to be so much more demand.”

Because the championships are the final qualifier for the 2010 Olympics, fans are expected to buy tickets earlier.

“We don’t have a crystal ball, but by October of ‘09 I don’t see that many tickets being open,” Steward said, “and by then, many of the open seats will be all the way up in the rafters.”