Ticket sales for the 42nd Carifta Games have exceeded expectations as every day of the event was sold out.

Laura Pratt-Charlton, committee member responsible for ticket sales said ticket sales went great, however, many people failed to take advantage of advanced ticket sales and thus caused for there to be a “mad rush” during each day of the event.

“There were limited seats that were available in terms of choices, but most of the seats that were available were the eastern seats, which for some reason people didn’t want. While they were good seats that’s not where most persons wanted to be,” she said.

Mrs. Pratt-Charlton, who has been in the Bahamian track and field family for years, said that the ticket sales team had to work with a new system and acknowledged that there were a few glitches; however, she said that as the days went on they got it together.

According to Mrs. Pratt-Charlton, there were a little over 14,000 seats that were up for sale, excluding those set aside for athletes, coaches, volunteers and team members.

Asked to address rumours that officials oversold the event, Mrs. Pratt-Charlton said that they were simply sold out.
She also noted that while the stadium was sold out, the stadium still appeared to be empty from one side.

“Most of those sections you see empty would be on the east, the very first section (section 1) was totally reserved for athletes and team officials. So on a given day if all the athletes were not out, especially during the first two days of competition you would have found that it would have been very scanty,” she said.

“Other than that you have volunteers and others, including corporate sponsors, who would have sponsored kids from different schools and given out tickets. So if the kids don’t show, those are seats that they would have paid for. So we cannot re-sell those seats. If you paid for three seats then those three seats are yours.”

Mrs. Pratt-Charlton also noted that some seats were empty because some individuals who purchased tickets for all three competition days decided to not show up.