Lord Coe has questioned the high ticket prices for athletics at the Olympic Games in Paris next summer, expressing concern that it will prove too expensive for athletes and their families as well as fans.
Tickets for a session of track-and-field action at the Stade de France are being listed for as much as £850 on the official Paris 2024 website. The cheapest remaining tickets for an evening are £170, while even mid-range category seats are priced at £330.
Coe, a double Olympic champion, described that as “lumpy” and said he has communicated his feelings to organisers in Paris in his role as the president of World Athletics.
“Ticket prices are pretty lumpy,” Coe said in an end-of-year briefing with the British media. “Ticket prices are not set by the international federations, but we will always speak to local organising committees.
“These are going to be the most expensive ticket prices in an athletics arena that we have witnessed at an Olympic Games. We asked for a balance.
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“The most important element here is you want fans in the stadium, paying affordable prices. I know the challenge on a budget — 25 per cent of our budget in London [for the 2012 Games] was tickets. Our ticket strategy was built three years before the Games. We knew more about our fans at the end of that.
“We had some expensive tickets but we also had a lot at affordable prices. These are difficult balances for any organising committee but, if I am wearing my World Athletics hat, I don’t want fans being costed out of the stadium and I certainly don’t want athletes and their families being costed out of the stadium.”
Coe said these concerns had been shared with the organising committee. “We have made the point that these prices are lumpy,” he said. “For our World Championships in Budapest this year we had very affordable tickets. For Tokyo in 2025 we will make sure we get the same as well.
“There are always going to be premium tickets but it is important that our stadiums are full of people who love our sport; not people who can afford to get to an Olympics.”
Coe feels particularly strongly about athletes and their families. “If you look over the course of an athlete’s career, there are very few athletes that are able to sit down and say they got in commercial sponsorship more than what their families put in,” he said. “Most are sitting there at the end of a 15-year career and saying, ‘It was my family who bore the brunt of what I did, in terms of funding, commitment and all that.’
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“I want to be respectful [towards the organisers]. It is not easy. I have done that job. But the cost of the Games seems to be rising.”
Last week Coe expressed his surprise at the omission of Josh Kerr, the world champion over 1,500m in Budapest, from the shortlist for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year (SPOTY) award. The heptathlete Katarina Johnson-Thompson did make the shortlist, and before Tuesday’s ceremony Coe made the point that the sole representative from his sport would be a worthy recipient because, unlike some on the list, “she won something”.
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Johnson-Thompson returned from serious injury to claim a second world title in the heptathlon and Coe, a former SPOTY winner, said: “Of course I’m going to say this, and this isn’t being remotely disparaging about anyone else on that list. That’s not my issue. The issue is that there are two truly global sports; one is football, one is track and field. And both Katarina and Josh Kerr won a world championship in one of the most fiercely competitive sports on the planet.
“Do I think there was room for both of them on that list? Of course I do. There is only Katarina Johnson-Thompson so of course I’m going to say, as the president of World Athletics, I would be voting for her. It was an extraordinary comeback, and she won a global world championship.”
