National ballot for Olympic tickets
27 February 1998Organisers of the Sydney Olympics say the proposed national ballot will be a useful way of distributing tickets for high demand sports like swimming.
Games chief executive Sandy Holloway has indicated the ballot will take place towards the middle of next year.
It is not clear exactly how many tickets will be allocated through the nationwide ballot, but it may be upwards of three million.
The application forms will allow people to indicate a series of options so if their first two or three fail then they will still have a good chance to see an Olympic event.
Sandy Holloway explains how it will work: "I think we get into balloting where preferences have been indicated and there's obviously an excess of requests over the sheer supply of seats available.
"For instance, I think many, many Australians would put as a high preference the finals of the swimming. I think they'd like to see if Kieren Perkins does it a third time."
The price of tickets will be announced in the lead-up to the ballot in the middle of next year.
