Lusofonia Games in Goa to be open for public free of cost

Panaji: The much-awaited Lusofonia Games, beginning in the state from January 18, will not be ticketed and sports aficionados can watch the sporting event without paying any entry fee.

Goa Chief Minister Manohar Parrikar made this announcement here today following a meeting with Lusofonia Games Organising Committee (LUGOC) officials, wherein the decision to scrap the the ticketing process was taken.

"The idea behind opening the gates for public is to attract maximum crowd for all events. The government will not lose any revenue by keeping it non-ticketed," Parrikar told reporters.

Earlier, the tickets had been designed and tentative prices had also been fixed for all the events. However, in order to ensure that nothing holds back the fans from enjoying the sporting action, Parrikar decided to scrap the tickets and roll the red carpet to sports fans.

"The state government is spending crores of rupees on creating infrastructure and organisation of the Games. As compared to that, the loss of revenue from sale of tickets, will be minuscule," said the Chief Minister.

The Lusofonia Games are among the largest and the most prestigious multinational, multi-sport games in the world organized by ACOLOP (Associação dos Comités Olímpicos de Língua Oficial Portugues), which involves athletes coming from Lusophone (Portuguese-speaking) countries.

Over 1500 athletes from 12 nations namely Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, East Timor, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Goa (India), Macau (China), Mozambique, Portugal, Sao Tome and Príncipe and Sri Lanka will compete in the 9 different sporting disciplines – athletics, basketball, beach volleyball, football, judo, table tennis, taekwondo, volleyball and wushu.