Some 8.2 million tickets for the Olympic Games (July 26 – August 11) and 900,000 tickets for the Paralympic Games (August 28 – September 8) have been sold so far, according to the organizers. But now it remains to be seen how to use them. It’s very simple: everything must go through the Paris 2024 Ticket Office application, available in French and English since this Wednesday.
Without a smartphone, there is no salvation
If for you, a phone is only used to make calls, or at least to send SMS messages, a big problem will arise. In fact, whatever you plan to do with your dear sesame, you must first download the official app and therefore have a smartphone. To log in, you will need to use the same identifiers that allowed you to purchase your precious items.
By clicking on the session you want (athletics from August 3 at 10 a.m. at the Stade de France, for example), you will access the corresponding ticket(s). For the moment, this only concerns sporting events. Tickets for the opening ceremony will only be available in about a month.
“A very secure QR code will be activated a few hours before the session, which you will need to present at access control,” explains Gabrielle Moati, ticketing and customer experience manager for Paris 2024. Here again, you will need to be in possession of at least one smartphone per group of people. A QR code presented on a printed sheet of paper will be refused.
How to transfer ticket(s)?
Finally, you won’t be able to travel to Paris but you have family in the capital who would be happy to go and watch climbing or modern pentathlon for you? Or have you been planning for a long time to give your uncle a ticket to the field hockey match that you bought several months ago?
Once again, you must go through the application to select the beneficiary of your choice, who will also have to download the app and create a Paris 2024 account if this has not already been done. The transfer can be done by email, SMS or WhatsApp.
“It must be done in advance, as soon as possible, so that the beneficiary can have access to all the information and for the sake of fluidity,” recommend the organizers. Please note that beneficiaries will not in turn be able to transfer a ticket or sell it. It’s the buyer who keeps control.
How to sell (or buy) them?
This is THE big question for a lot of ticket holders. For example those in the very first sales phase, forced to take a pack of three different sports even if they were only interested in one. There is only one legal way. In the app, simply click on “resell” and select the ticket(s) you no longer want. “We cannot freely set the price, it is necessarily the face value of the ticket,” explains Michaël Aloïsio, deputy general director of Paris 2024.
But be careful, new rule! Administrative fees apply: they amount to 5% for sellers, and 10% for buyers, who only have a bank card as a means of payment. “If I bought the ticket for 50 euros, the person who will buy it for me on the platform will pay 55 euros, and I will be reduced by 5% of the price of the ticket,” continues Michaël Aloïsio. In this case, the initial buyer will lose 2.50 euros in the deal and will receive 47.50 euros, almost immediately or at the latest 45 days after the operation, depending on the speed of their bank.
Furthermore, children’s places can only be resold with adult places included in the same family offer. Same restriction for accompanying tickets, inseparable from the PSH (people with disabilities) or PFR (wheelchair users) tickets with which they were purchased. Finally, the resale must take place no later than 12 hours before the start of the session. But in the event of a last minute impediment, it will always be possible to transfer a ticket to an acquaintance.