Tickets of the 16th Asian Games will feature Games Mascots, the Five-Ram Sculpture of GuangZhou and kapok flowers, highlighting local Lingnan elements of South china.
The Guangzhou Asian Games Organising Committee (GAGOC) held a press conference on Wednesday (August 18) to unveil the prototype ticket images for the Opening & Closing Ceremonies and sports competitions of the Games. The organisers also briefed reporters on the ticket sales for the Opening & Closing Ceremonies of the Guangzhou 2010 Asian Games and Asian Para Games.
The tickets reflect both the Asian Games spirit and distinctive features of Guangzhou with patterns such as the Games Mascots and important symbols of Guangzhou – the Five-Ram Sculpture and kapok flowers, for example – and core graphics as the backdrop.
According to Yuan Yue, Director of the Main Ticketing Centre of GAGOC, there are designs for five categories of Guangzhou 2010 tickets, including the tickets for the Opening Ceremony, the Closing Ceremony, accredited personnel and ordinary spectators as well as thermal tickets. Among them, the first four are commemorative tickets that are produced beforehand – the tickets booked by the public in Phase I and II (launched in May and July 2010 respectively) ticket sales are all commemorative ones; thermal tickets will be available in the phase of real-time ticket sales, produced by thermal printers upon purchase.
The 2010 Asian Games tickets will have a variety of anti-counterfeiting security features such as microprinting, the OVI (optically variable ink), the dual-polarisation liquid crystal ink, the three-colour luminescent ink and the DMC (dynamic model certification) automatic identification technology, for which the China Banknote Printing and Minting Corporation owns a patent. It will be the first time that the DMC technology is used to prevent counterfeiting of tickets of a major international sporting event.
Meanwhile, Ms Yuan said the second phase ticket sales had gone smoothly between July 26 and August 15 with applications for about 20,000 tickets for the Asian Games Opening & Closing Ceremonies, including 16,000 or so for the Opening Ceremony.
GAGOC will conduct a ticket lottery within a month to select the owners of the 5,000 tickets available for the Asian Games Opening Ceremony. The lottery process will be closely watched by the Guangzhou Notary Public Office and the media. The lottery results will be announced in September. Then GAGOC will send confirmation letters to lottery winners and return payments to other applicants. Since the tickets for the Closing Ceremony of the Asian Games and the Opening & Closing Ceremonies of the Asian Para Games have not been sold out, all applicants for the three ceremonies have won their tickets and will receive confirmation letters before long. The tickets for the Asian Games Opening & Closing Ceremonies will be delivered in October and those for the Asian Para Games Opening & Closing Ceremonies will be delivered in November.
From July 26 to August 15, 5,000 tickets were on sale for the Asian Games Opening Ceremony and another 5,000 for the Closing Ceremony, ranging from RMB1,600 to 6,800; 10,000 tickets were on sale for the Asian Para Games Opening Ceremony and another 10,000 for the Closing Ceremony, ranging from RMB50 to 1,000.