Tokyo 2020 Ticket Requests Close After 7.5M Applicants

The first phase of ticketing for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics closed earlier this week after 7.5 million Japan residents applied for the lottery drawing.

The application period was reportedly extended by 12 hours due to high demand. According to the Associated Press, 7.5 million “ID registrations” were recorded, which allowed people to apply and enter the lottery, but organizers declined to say how many tickets had been applied for through the online system. They noted that “Tokyo 2020 is not disclosing additional details at this stage.”

Applicants will find out what tickets they were allocated in the lottery system on June 20. Out-of-country fans will be able to apply for tickets on June 15 through Authorized Ticket Resellers, and organizers say that approximately 7.8 million tickets will be available with 20-30 percent dedicated to sales outside of Japan. United States residents will be able to purchase tickets through CoSport, which also handles sales in countries like Australia and Jordan.

However, out-of-country fans run the risk of receiving tickets that are not seated together, as the CoSport site states that they can not guarantee seats next to one another. Fans dealt with this issue earlier this month for the Women’s World Cup in France, complaining to FIFA as many families were separated.

“While CoSport will make every effort to seat parties together, it is not possible to guarantee that all tickets for a given session and seating category will be seated together,” the company said.

Ticket prices and venues were announced last summer. General tickets to events are sold within five price ranges per sport, ranging from the cheapest at ¥2,500 ($22 USD) to the most expensive ticket at ¥130,000 ($1,183 USD). Opening ceremony tickets range from ¥12,000 ($109 USD) to ¥300,000 ($2,730 USD) and closing ceremony tickets are between ¥12,000 ($108 USD) and ¥220,000 ($1,982 USD). The starting price for each event is somewhere between ¥2,500 ($22 USD) and ¥5,800 ($52 USD) for all events.

A law was recently passed in the country that bans ticket resale above face value. Those who violate this law can be fined up to 1 million yen ($9,100), or face a one-year jail term. This year, organizers hope to generate $800 million from ticket sales.