The annual farce of the Sevens ticket ballot begins again today as registration opens for the public ticket ballot. The registration period runs from 27 November to 31 January, 2016 with the ballot taking place on the 5 February, 2016 and winners notified that day by email.
There are 9,000 individual tickets on-sale. Since regular tickets are sold as 3-day pass. There’s actually only 3,000 tickets available to the public each day in the 40,000 seater stadium. The rest are whored out to corporate sponsors or as a ‘reward’ for joining (and funding) a local rugby club. You don’t even have to play rugby, a social member as long as you’ve paid the membership fees (For example SCAA Causeway Bay charges $900 annually for a non-playing membership) can apply to buy a full three day ticket at cost price. Or roughly added in with membership fees, about the same as you’d pay a street ‘reseller’ – which is where many of those tickets and those reserved forsale overseas end up. Sadly as the minuscule crowd that turned up for the Olympic qualifiers showed, it’s the event not the rugby that’s the attraction. So if you want a better chance of a sevens ticket, join a rugby club – you’ll support the local game and you never know you might even enjoy the rugby.
Those who ‘win’ in the ballot will need to pay for their tickets by 19 February 2016. The ticket cost is HK$300 for Friday, HK$750 for Saturday and HK$750 for Sunday. In addition an administration fee of HK$50 will be charge for each ticket.
To register http://hksevens.com/tickets/ballot-registration