More than 220,000 tickets for Rio 2016 Olympic Games were sold on Thursday and Friday (21-22 January) as organisers put the final major batch on sale to residents of Brazil. About 500,000 tickets became available and the demand was intense, with peaks of more than 3,000 transactions per minute as fans rushed to secure seats.

The majority of the tickets were made available from the organising committee’s ‘contingency’ allocation. For example, in some venues large areas were initially reserved for the installation of broadcast equipment and some of those areas have now been made available. In total, about 45 per cent of this allocation was sold by 6pm on Friday. 

The most sought-after tickets were for athletics, swimming, football, handball, the opening and closing ceremonies, basketball, volleyball, beach volleyball, tennis, judo and the three gymnastics disciplines (artistic, rhythmic and trampoline).

Residents of Brazil can buy tickets from the Rio 2016 tickets website, while overseas fans can buy from the authorised ticket resellers (ATRs) in their regions. Click on these links to see the list of ATRs for the Olympic Games and Paralympic Games.

More tickets are set to be become available to Brazilian residents through the ticket resale programme, which Rio 2016 launched last October.