The 16th Asian Games, part of the worldwide Olympic movement and governed by the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA), is pleased to announce that more than two million tickets will be on sale to the public in early October.

The Asian Games are the second largest sports event in the world after the Summer Olympic Games.

The tickets, to be put on sale in early October, and priced between 10 yuan and 400 yuan, or 88 yuan on average, are for the 42 sports that will be featured in the Games.

Mr. Ji Lei, Deputy Administration Manager of the Ticketing Division of the Guangzhou Asian Games Organizing Committee, told a media conference here today, that the Asian Games would have the most number of contestants and events, including 28 Olympic Games events and 14 non-Olympic sports.

The Guangzhou Asian Games Organizing Committee is currently here, capitalizing on the ongoing Youth Olympic Games, to announce the final preparations and promotions of the upcoming Asian Games.

Groundwork for the Games, which took nearly six years of preparation, has been completed. The Guangzhou Asian Games Organizing committee is now in the final stages of preparing the 70 venues located in Guangzhou and other cities, including Foshan, Dongguan and Shanwei, which would be finalizing by next month.

Four major sport events, namely, dancesport, dragon boat, roller sports and cricket, and two Chinese ancient board games, Weiqi and Xiangqi, will make their debut in the Asian Games and for the first time women’s events will also include sports such as boxing, kabbadi (a team contact sport originating in India), water polo, cricket, roller sports, dragon boat, Weiqi and Xiangqi.

A total of three million tickets for the Asian Games will be made available to the public. The first phase of ticket sales was launched May 20 and concluded July 12 with more than 200,000 tickets for 69 matches under 13 disciplines sold.

For further information on ticketing, the public can log onto the games ticketing website at www.tickets.gz2010.cn.