KEY POINTS:
New Zealand's ticket allocation for next year's Beijing Olympics is well below that of previous years, says New Zealand Olympic Committee secretary-general Barry Maister.
"The number we got was a bit hurtful, but we think we can do a lot better," he said.
Maister, recently returned from a trip to Beijing and meetings with the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (Bocog), said there was no real cause for concern - yet.
"Overall we got far less allocated in this first round than we have in previous Games," Maister said.
"We expressed our concerns about it and got given an explanation. They're saying 'hold your breath, because there's more allocations to come'.
"There always are. Tickets come back unsold and they get redistributed and so on. We're not despairing yet, but we've expressed to Bocog our concerns."
Maister said Bocog had told NZOC there were 40 new agencies seeking ticketing allocations for the Games, and therefore tickets were tight, especially for the opening and closing ceremonies, swimming and gymnastics.
"Our initial allocation in swimming is for two tickets per session. For the opening ceremony we applied for something like 400 and got 60. We are not crying into our milk just yet - we're striving to do better than that, obviously."
Maister said organisers pointed out that in other events "we could order away to our heart's content".
"I'm on a working party of ANOC (Association of National Olympic Committees) around the world. We've been asked to compare notes to a degree, because the general concern out there is that there's not enough [tickets] around."
When China held its first on-line raffle for 40,000 tickets for the opening ceremony, 700,000 bids flooded in.
But Maister said the IOC had a "very clear" ticket allocation formula, which ensured a certain proportion of tickets was earmarked for the international market.
- NZPA
