South Korea's most popular sports are still well short of a sellout.GETTY IMAGES
PyeongChang Games organizers said that nearly 70% of all available tickets for next month's Olympics have been sold as of Friday, up from about 61% late last month. The pace of sales has improved as the domestic marketing campaign has blanketed South Korea. However, PyeongChang is still in line for historically poor attendance for an Olympic Games. Even South Korea's most popular sports -- figure skating (62.4% of target sold), short-track speed skating (81.8%) and alpine skiing (82.3%) -- are well short of a sellout. The events with the fewest tickets sold include skeleton (45.2% of inventory sold), Nordic Combined (52.5%) and the Closing Ceremony (55.2%).
For the Feb. 9 Opening Ceremony, 17,512 out of 22,536 tickets have been sold. InviteManager COO Ken Hanscom, whose CRM software firm is in Korea working on corporate hospitality, said there is not much evidence of a last-second push that would lead to sellouts. Hanscom: "So far, I have not seen the indicators I would expect to. Things like lines at ticket booths, low inventory on ticketing and fan-to-fan sites, trains filled up for non-Korean New Year dates (outside Feb. 16). ... There are still plenty of tickets for the Opening Ceremony, which one would expect to be in high demand with North and South marching under a unified flag."
