Record ticket sales mark Milano Cortina Winter Games opening

The opening ceremony of the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics, held on Friday night at Milan’s San Siro stadium, set a record with more than 61,000 tickets sold, the head of the local organisers said on Saturday.

Another 10,000 spectators watched the ceremony in other locations in a Games where events are being staged across a large area of northern Italy.

Organisers said everything worked smoothly in the San Siro, Milan’s famous soccer stadium, adding it was too early to provide broadcasting figures.

“It was a major challenge and we were very, very proud of our achievement. I am very pleased that everything went very well from an organisational point of view, which was not easy in such a unique context,” Andrea Varnier, CEO of the Milano Cortina 2026 Foundation, said at a press conference.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) said the only issue was the length of a show that went on for three and a half hours.

CEREMONY STRETCHED ACROSS FOUR LOCATIONS

For the first time, athletes paraded in four different locations. Two Olympic cauldrons — one of the Games’ key symbols — were lit simultaneously and will burn throughout the event.

One cauldron is at Milan’s Arco della Pace (Peace Arch) and the other in Piazza Dibona in co-host Cortina d’Ampezzo.

“The feeling I had at the ceremony? How elegant, how beautiful. The imagery, but also how profoundly Italian yet universal that ceremony was,” said Christophe Dubi, the Olympic Games executive director.

“The only remark we got was the length. It is a pretty complex operation. It will be analysed,” Dubi added.

Thousands of people worked on the ceremony, including 1,400 performers — 1,200 of them volunteers — and many more deployed around the country.

“Our goal was to captivate the world and better showcase our country,” said Maria Laura Iascone, ceremonies director for the Milano Cortina 2026 Foundation.

MARIAH CAREY AND CO WORKED FOR FREE

Artists who performed on Friday, including U.S. pop star Mariah Carey — who opened the show in a ceremony blending elements of both host regions, city and mountain — did not receive any compensation.

“We were honoured that she was with us,” Iascone said.

Varnier also dismissed social media criticism that Italian rapper Ghali’s performance was not given enough prominence.

The inclusion of Ghali, born in Milan to Tunisian parents, in the cast had sparked a row in Italy because of his past criticism of Israel over its war in Gaza.

“The idea behind the television directing was to show the whole rather than the individual,” Varnier said.