Early bird tickets are now on sale for the 2019 FINA World Championships in Gwangju, South Korea.
The Championships – which feature swimming, diving, water polo, artistic (synchronized) swimming, and open water races – take place July 12th-28th, 2019, with pool swimming running the 21st to 28th.
Single swim session tickets start at 8500 South Korean won, or about $8.50 USD, and go up to 25,500 won, or about $23 USD. Water polo tickets range from $8.50 to $23 for early rounds and max out at $38 for the final match. Tickets to diving prelims fall in the same $8-$23 range, while tickets to finals are as much as $53; artistic swimming finals are similarly priced.
In comparison to the 2017 edition of the meet, which took place in Budapest, Hungary, tickets are significantly more expensive – though still quite affordable on the scale of professional sports. Prelims tickets to swimming in 2017 cost 500 Hungarian forints, or about $2 USD. Finals tickets were a little over $7. Diving tickets cost between $2 and $5.50, and artistic swimming was in the $2-$11 range.
Tickets to the 2015 meet in Kazan, Russia, ranged from less than $1 to about $44.
Just a heads up…. I was in Korea last week and bought tickets for myself and a few friends (with a Korean bank card…. couldn’t get my U.S. one to work).
Called the sales office/FINA in Gwangju to ask why we couldn’t pick seats when purchasing tickets online, and they said to just “come early and sit where you can”.
For swimming, even when buying the highest category of tickets (i.e. best seats/section), there is no assigned seating. It’s first come-first seated (within your purchased seating area)…. First time I’ve seen that at a Worlds.
I think this is going to a mess come game-time. Korean chaos…..