What is the Paris 2024 Olympics Ticket Lottery and How do I Win Tickets to the Summer Games?
If you have been following my Ultimate Guide to Paris 2024, including how to Purchase Tickets for Paris 2024, you know the first big opportunity to secure your tickets for the Summer Games in Paris, France is coming up on December 1, 2022 through the first phase which includes two ticket lotteries! There are a lot of questions on how these ticket lotteries work and how fans can both register for the lottery and also purchase tickets. This is one of the most exciting times in planning to attend the Olympics, your first opportunity to obtain some tickets to the event you wan to go to!
This article will dive into all the details surrounding the upcoming Lottery Phase so that you are prepared and know what to expect.
Before we get started, here are some of the details that are important to remember:
- There will be approximately 10M tickets available for the Paris 2024 Olympic Summer Games the most ever and supporting the Paris 2024 Games Wide Open theme.
- Tickets at each Olympics are generally allocated in the following manner: 70% of tickets to the host country (France), 20% to Olympic Family, Sponsors, and other related parties, 10% to the rest of the world.
- Only a subset of the available tickets will be available during the Lottery Phase
- There will be several more phases of ticket sales over the next 20 months before Paris 2024, this is just the first.
- Ticket prices, not including Opening and Closing Ceremony range from EUR 24 to EUR 950.
- Paris 2024 will only feature digital tickets, there will be no physical tickets available. Remains to be seen if souvenir tickets will be available for purchase.
One of the most important items to keep in mind is that the majority of people are not selected during the lottery phase, especially if you are not a resident of France. If you are not selected for either phase, do not be discouraged — there will be many, many additional opportunities to obtain tickets to the events you want. In fact, for the last three Summer Games cycles — London 2012, Rio 2016, and Tokyo 2020 — I was not awarded a single ticket in the lottery phase. Still, I managed to attend almost 30 events at each Olympics and was well on my way to attending more at Tokyo 2020 before spectators were not allowed to attend.
What is a the Ticket Lottery Phase?
The ticket lottery phase for Paris 2024 is your first opportunity as a fan to secure those tickets to the Olympic Summer Games. There are two stages, the first stage which is the “Make Your Games” stage for ticket packs where you have the ability to select 3 sessions that you would like to attend. The second stage, is for individual tickets. These two stages will run separately from each other with the Make Your Games stage from December 2022 — February 2023 and the individual ticket sales from March 2023 — May 2023.
Why a ticket lottery and how does it work?
The ticket lottery (or ticket draw) is often considered the “most fair option” for the random distribution of tickets when the demand exceeds the supply of tickets. And for Paris 2024, the demand will sharply exceed the supply — with millions of fans wanting to attend at least an event at Paris 2024. Demand could be higher than ever given fans missed out on Tokyo 2020 due to the pandemic. Given that, the use of a lottery is a common pattern to randomly select individuals who will have the option to purchase tickets at face value (EUR 24 to EUR 950). The pattern has been used for other large worldwide events such as the World Cup and has been used in previous Olympics for host countries. Paris 2024 will be the first time that the Olympics have held a worldwide lottery.
There are other significant benefits of a registration process, followed by a lottery selection and purchase process, a smart idea that Paris 2024 selected this approach for the first phase. Without a lottery process, imagine getting into a queue that would be up to 10 times larger than the release of the latest tickets for a Beyonce, Ed Sheeran, or Taylor Swift concert. Scary thought, I know — possibly spending hours if not days waiting for your chance to purchase tickets only to find out when you finally get in that they were all gone. This is exactly what the lottery hopes to avoid for the lucky fans that are selected during this phase.
Smartly, Paris 2024 has also decided to email those who are selected to let them know that they are selected and they are given a 48-hour window when they can come in, select their tickets and make their purchase. Why is this so smart? By informing winners of when they can log in and purchase rather than having all registrants coming into check at a specific time, Paris 2024 will avoid the type of queue that Tokyo 2020 had where when the results were released there were over 1 MILLION fans in the queue to check and see if they had won, many who waited in a queue for hours! This should save both the fans and Paris 2024 quite a few headaches while protecting the fan experience.
What about the different stages?
The first stage, the MAKE YOUR GAMES stage opens for registration on December 1, 2022 and registration ends on January 31, 2023. The lottery will then be run and starting around February 13, 2023 those selected will be notified with their purchase slots, where you will have 48 hours to visit the ticketing platform to make your selections. You will select 3 sessions to complete you pack. Tip: The earlier you log into the ticketing platform during your time slot, the more likely you will be to find tickets for the events you are looking for.
The second stage, the individual tickets stage opens for registration March — April and in May 2023 you will receive a time slot, again by email to purchase your single tickets across available sessions by logging into the ticketing platform. There is still fairly limited information about the individual ticket stage such as the number of tickets or number of sessions you will be able to purchase. Look for this section to be updated as more information is available.
One common questions is, will I be able to pick my seats? In short, the answer is no. At this stage of ticket sales, Olympic tickets are sold in categories usually ranging from Category A to Category E depending on the size of the venue with the Category A tickets being seats that are generally closer to the action with preferred view as well as more expensive.
How does Paris 2024 The Club (Le Club) play into this, does it increase my chances?
You absolutely should register for The Club for Paris 2024, although it will not increase your chances of a being selected in the ticket lottery draw. The reason, rather than increasing you changes of being selected is that members of The Club for Paris 2024 will be able to select their tickets in the first 4 days of the sales window. This is a significant advantage and benefit as you get the first opportunity to choose your events. As mentioned above, the sooner you are able to purchase the better chance you will have at the available sessions that you want. Do not delay and sign up for The Club at your earliest opportunity where over 800,000 have already signed up at the time of this posting.
With all the information that is out there, there are still a few questions that have not been answered yet. If details emerge on the questions below, this article will be updated. Have a question that was not answered? Leave it in the comments section.
How many tickets will I be able to purchase?
Inside the Games is reporting that you will be able to purchase up to six tickets per session and up to 10 ticket packs per account for the Make Your Games stage of the ticket lottery sales.
What questions have not been answered yet?
- How many tickets will be available during the lottery phase.
- Which events will have sessions available for purchase, including if any Opening or Closing Ceremony tickets will be available.
- How country allocations will work between the host country (France) and all other countries.
About Ken Hanscom
Ken Hanscom is a veteran-fan of the Olympic Games and the recognized expert in ticketing, corporate sponsorships, traveling to and experiencing the Olympic Games.
In his role as COO at TicketManager, during Rio 2016 & PyeongChang 2018, Ken worked directly with the United States Olympic Committee, NBC Universal, Anheuser-Busch, & Cartan Tours the authorized ticket reseller for 23 countries across the globe on their ticketing & corporate hospitality programs. While in Rio & PyeongChang, Ken was featured in Primetime on NBC’s Olympic Zone with Natalie Morales and has attended hundreds of events during Olympic Games while guest blogging for the International Business Times, writing for USA Today, The Post Game, and appearing on ESPN Radio.
Ken and his wife Ashley are trustees of the United States Olympic & Paralympic Foundation (USOPF) and plan to spend a month in Paris during Summer Games and look forward to meeting many of you.
For more information and interviews with Ken on the Olympics and the upcoming Paris 2024 Summer Games, connect via Twitter or directly at kenh@ticketmanager.com.
