With just over four months remaining until the 2024 US Olympic Trials, the latest count shows 22,202 tickets available for the June 15th session (day 1) of the meet.
That means roughly 2,100 tickets have been sold since mid-December, when USA Swimming began offering discounts to try and fill the behemoth Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. A quick survey shows that this number appears fairly representative of other days of the meet, with some sessions have more seats in the higher tiers sold, with others having a few more tickets sold closer to the pool.
Most of the tickets being sold are toward the middle of the pool, leaning toward the start end versus the turn end. Those seats are considered to be generally preferred, and with tickets costing the same within each level of the building regardless of where they’re oriented relative to the pool, those are the ones that should sell first.
It has been just under two months since SwimSwam’s last survey of tickets where we also counted day 1 ticket availability. Since then, 2,118 tickets, to be exact, have been sold, meaning a sales rate of roughly 37 tickets per day. If that rate continues, that would be another 4,500 tickets or so sold.
Demand for tickets for sporting events often increases as the event gets closer and excitement builds – though that’s not always the case with undersold events. With more swimmers yet to qualify, though, friends and family tickets should still continue at a steady pace.
Carrying the math forward, the event is on track to have about 17,000 tickets remaining, meaning it would be less than half-sold relative to USA Swimming’s initial estimate of “up to 30,000 attendees a session,” though some sections have not been opened for sale yet,, so it’s unclear what is included in that number.
That would also imply far fewer tickets sold than the sold-out events from 2016 (pre-COVID) at the CHI Health Center in Omaha. For each session in Omaha in 2016 (which was one day shorter), there were 12,963 tickets available. The announced attendance each night was over 14,700, but that included athlete and media seating.
But as we keep reminding everyone, what a 40% full venue (one already reduced in capacity by 40%) might lack in atmosphere, it will make up for in gross revenue: a dramatic increase in pricing for the 2024 Trials could make up the financial gap of fewer tickets being sold. 100 level seats are roughly 3x the cost in Indianapolis as they were in Omaha.
Back to Omaha please. This was never going to work in a huge football stadium. The atmosphere is going to suck. In Omaha we were so close to the pool it was awesome. Just another poor example of how USA swimming is run.
The only way they’ll fill this stadium is if Michael Andrew starts dating Taylor Swift. That’s it.
When this was announced earlier and the masters champs were pushed back two months to coincide, I was pretty excited. But then looked at the prices, talked to a few teammates here in CA, and it was just too much. So missing the masters meet and the trials, will watch it on TV somewhere and do a big regional meet instead..
Maybe if they lowered prices to something an average American can afford we would see more ticket sales.
When Hinchey gets the boot, is he going to leave with a massive golden parachute?
Just checked and they are charging up to $400 per set per session. Lowest price is $100 per session. Prices are ridiculous.
Those are more like Olympic Games prices in my head? $400 per ticket? Damn I’d rather see an F1 Race
What? I bought 3 tickets for $167 total.
Yes, if you bought 3 tickets for the 600 level during the Christmas promotion, your cost would have been $167 or so including fees. ($118 + fees).
Right now, those 3 tickets would cost you $183 including fees.
This will be the approximate view from those seats (noting that a pool is bigger than a basketball court): https://aviewfrommyseat.com/large-photo/199212/Lucas+Oil+Stadium/section-626/row-23/seat-7/
We looked into a family trip with our 4 AG swimmers. Ticket prices are just too high. If they want to fill the seats they are going to have to drop the prices.
Taylor Swift needs to be dating a swimmer by early summer for this math to work out.