Public snaps up tickets for Universiade

Almost all released so far have sold out, especially for popular events

As athletes are busy making last-minute preparations to compete in the Chengdu FISU World University Games, which officially begin on Friday, the public competition to get seats to watch the games has long been underway.

Almost all the tickets released so far, including those for the preliminaries and finals for all 18 sports, were sold out by Monday afternoon, and according to the official WeChat ticket platform for the games — also known as Universiade — only a few seats remain available for the basketball matches.

The first phase of ticket sales started on June 16, and 90 percent of the nearly 30,000 tickets initially released for sale were snapped up by July 4. Since then, organizers have opened up more tickets in a series of staggered releases, but these have often been quickly grabbed.