Olympics Hospitality Program Gives Fans Another Avenue For Paris 2024 Tickets

By the time the Olympics opening ceremony kicks off in Paris next July, 10 million tickets will have been sold for 329 medal events. (Tickets are available for every sport on the program but surfing, which will take place across the globe in Tahiti.)

Olympics ticket sales for the general public opened in February 2023 via a draw, for which would-be attendees registered online. In this “phase one” of ticketing, Paris 2024 sold 3.5 million tickets—the largest sale of tickets ever for a sporting event in France, per Paris 2024 president Tony Estanguet.

The second phase of Olympics ticketing in May 2023—also determined via lottery, for which 4 million people registered—saw 1.89 million additional tickets sold.

In all, 6.8 million tickets have been sold to date (5.2 million to the general public and 1.6 million to corporate partners and other groups). That means that nine months out from next summer’s Games, more than 70 percent of the 10 million tickets available have been sold.

Tickets are now available online, with no lottery, through the Paris 2024 ticketing platform. However, many of the 758 sessions are completely sold out, and for others, the tickets that remain are not cheap.

Prices for the general public on-sale range from 24 euros to 2,700 euros (about $2,900 USD) for premium opening ceremony viewing. Of all available tickets, 70 percent are 100 euros or less and 4.5 percent are more than 200 euros.

Four millon tickets across the 750 sporting sessions are priced at 50 euros or less. However, those affordable tickets went quickly, and if buyers didn’t draw a favorable time slot, there was almost no way to get them, which led to some frustration with this new lottery system.

By the time phase two rolled around, only 200,000 low-cost tickets remained. (Remember: 4 million people had registered for that draw.)

Organizers have urged fans to keep an eye on the official ticketing platform, noting that tickets for various sessions may be released anytime up through the beginning of the Games. An official resale platform will also launch in spring 2024.

For the first time ever, however, the Games’ hospitality program is also available to the public, and its packages include tickets for sessions that are sold out on the general ticketing platform.

Buyers may assume that the Paris 2024 hospitality program caters only to corporate partners and to groups wishing to purchase stadium suites and elaborate food and drink add-ons. And while those options are available, Paris 2024’s hospitality partner, On Location, stresses that ticket packages are available across price points and levels of service.

Let’s say you were hoping to buy a ticket to a women’s singles tennis match. Through the official Paris 2024 ticketing site, those sessions—actually, tennis events, period—are completely sold out. During phase one and phase two sales, tennis sessions ranged from 30 euros to 420 euros, depending on seat location. That cost solely covers admission to the event.

Toggle over to the hospitality packages, however, and you’ll find that multiple sessions—men’s and women’s singles and doubles—are still available. The highest level of these—prime seats located closest to the action and “gold”-level on-site hospitality services—are what you might expect when you think of “hospitality,” running 2,350 euros per person.

But hospitality isn’t always synonymous with luxury; packages with seats set farther back that include off-site hospitality services are also available for 150 euros per person. That price includes a ticket to the actual session of your choosing (e.g., women’s singles qualification on July 27) at Roland Garros Stadium as well as access to On Location’s in-the-city hospitality lounge, Clubhouse 24, in the Palais de Tokyo.

Designed as a home base for viewers before or after a session, Clubhouse 24 will feature a Parisian-inspired food market, interactive Olympics exhibits, live music performances, athlete appearances and livestreams of the day’s events. A concierge service can help guests add events to their itinerary, organize tourist outings, arrange private transport or book a dinner reservation.

Guests who buy tickets via the hospitality program can access Clubhouse 24 on any day for which they have a session. There is also a more exclusive off-venue hospitality offering, Salon 24, in the Maison de L’Amerique Latine, which guests who purchase a gold package may access before their events.

Those who view the Paris Olympics as a bucket-list trip also have luxury package options that will put them closer to the field of play than in any prior Games.

On Location’s “On the Finish Line” package will seat 1 percent of spectators directly on the finish line of athletics competitions in the Stade de France. The gold-level package, which runs 1,150 to 8,500 euros per person depending on the event, also includes on-site hospitality in a lounge close to the seats, gourmet dining and meet-and-greets with athletes.

The silver-level On the Finish Line package, for 895 to 4,900 euros per person, also includes an on-site hospitality experience at the Stade de France but with no athlete meet-and-greets or access to Salon 24.

Also of note are sailing packages that put viewers as close to the action as possible—by stationing them on an actual boat in Marseille. Each boat includes a professional skipper and a sporting expert to provide commentary.

Travel hospitality packages that bundle hotel stays with session tickets can run from 490 euros per person for one night in a three-star hotel and tickets to one Olympic event to 36,230 euros per person for six nights in a five-star hotel and tickets to six Olympic events with in-venue hospitality.

Guests can also work with On Location’s customer service team to put together custom packages depending on the length of their trip, the size of their group and which specific events they hope to attend.

“There is no commercial or product effort in the industry like this,” said Will Whiston, executive vice president of Olympic and Paralympic Games for On Location. “Our job is to solve for the biggest challenge for the guest—making it a seamless experience when the entire world descends on one city and figuring out those logistics on behalf of the customer.”

Per Whiston, On Location and Paris 2024 have assembled a massive ground transportation fleet and are also working with the French government to provide access to public transit for seamless entry and exit into different parts of the city. (While many Olympic events will be staged in the heart of Paris, other competition venues include Stade Pierre Mauroy in Lille, Allianz Riviera in Nice and Marseille Marina.)

“The hardest part of figuring out the Olympics for a fan is accommodations,” Whiston said. “We’ve secured tens of thousands of hotel room nights with guest management onsite. These are guaranteed hotels we have contracts with and we’ve partnered with.”

As one might imagine, organizers moving to a single online Olympics ticketing platform for the first time ever makes the process vulnerable to scalpers. On Location and the Paris 2024 ticketing system are monitoring all sales to ensure tickets are going to real guests.

“We have technology in place and systems in place that detect and avoid selling to scalpers,” Whiston said. “We as well as Paris 2024 are actively canceleing bookings by scalpers because we monitor it on a daily basis.”

Why now, for Paris 2024, is a dedicated global hospitality e-commerce platform available for the first time?

Bringing all ticketing under the umbrella of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Paris 2024 was a major goal for organizers.

In the past, tickets were sold in the domestic market and difficult to access—often, travel agencies and other brokers would sell tickets they didn’t actually have, a common practice on the secondary market. That’s a major issue if you’ve flown across the U.S. to attend, say, the Super Bowl…but what if you’ve flown across the Atlantic and booked a hotel for 10 days to attend the Olympics?

Paris 2024 marks the first time that Olympics tickets have gone on sale through a single, official platform at standardized prices, operated by the Organising Committees for the Olympic Games (OCOGs).

Likewise, On Location and its authorised sub-distributors, which will also run hospitality programs for the Milano Cortina 2026 and LA28 Games, are the only authorized sources through which ticket-inclusive hospitality and travel packages can be purchased.

“The Olympics were not attainable before,” Whiston said. “Not because of price point necessarily, but because, at the most basic level, people didn’t know how to get tickets. We’re completely changing that to where it’s not only accessible, but we’re making people aware they can go to the events they would like, they can explore the city in an organized fashion.”

The new model will also apply to the Paris 2024 Paralympics, for which ticketing opened on Oct. 9. The Paralympics opening ceremony will take place along the Champs Élysées and Place de la Concorde.

Within Paralympics hospitality packages, accessible seating, accommodation and transport options are all available.

Certain Olympics events have sold out earlier than Paris 2024 and On Location expected due purely to demand. Triathlon, sport climbing, BMX racing, BMX freestyle and breaking sessions all sold out in less than two hours. While more tickets for some sessions may be released late this year or in the lead-up to the Games in 2024, once some sell out, they will be sold out for good.

“This is not only going to be a sporting moment but a cultural moment,” Whiston said. “The last time Paris hosted the Games was in 1924. It’s a once-in-a-century event.”