With only 16 days to its opening, the Busan Asian Games is suffering from sluggish ticket sales, with less than half of the tickets to the opening ceremony sold. According to the organizing committee and Busan local government, 20,000 of the 43,719 tickets to the opening ceremony have been sold as of Friday, and only the third tier seats are sold out; the first and second tier seats are expected to be almost empty. Sales of tickets to the closing ceremony and other events are suffering even worse.

Only 3,058 of 47,708 tickets to the closing ceremony, or 6 percent, and 96,498 of 2,631,359 general event tickets, a mere 4 percent, have been sold. 4.2 percent, or 7,800 out of 185,000 tickets to the soccer tournament, have been reserved, and ticket sales to basketballs games marked 2.5 percent, only 2,200 of 86,000 tickets.

In order to boost ticket sales, Busan reviewed its current plans to attract audiences, and launched a campaign among local agencies and groups to encourage citizens to watch at least one game per person. 65,440 employees of 1,038 public agencies and some 764,000 members of 295 local organizations, including the Busan Medical Association, have been asked to cooperate in the campaign.

Also, some 410 small and mid-size companies in Busan metropolitan area are encouraged to watch Asian Games events in groups. The local government also suggested various events organized by the city, and gift-giveaway events at department stores to use Asian Games tickets as prizes, and offered an incentive of W30 million to the districts and counties with high sales performance.

The organizing committee is offering 30% group discount for a party of more than 20 people, and a 50% discount to students, the disabled, and senior citizens, with some restrictions. Package tickets are also available at W70,000, which grants the ticket holder admission into all events except for the opening and closing ceremonies.

(Park Ju-yeong, park21@chosun.com )