Art and Nina Lussi do a test lighting of a new LED cauldron in Brewster Park in Lake Placid on Monday night. The cauldron will officially be lit on Thursday night during the opening ceremony for the 2023 FISU Winter World University Games. (Enterprise photo — Lauren Yates)

LAKE PLACID — Tri-Lakes residents can receive a 40% discount on tickets for events during the FISU Winter World University Games now through the end of the competition.

The 40% locals discount started on Jan. 1, originally promoted as a sale through Jan. 5. On Sunday, the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism announced that the ticket sale would be extended for locals for the duration of the games.

Around 18,000 tickets for the games had been sold as of Monday, according to Jon Lundin, the head of communications for the event. That’s 27%, or 49,000 shy, of organizers’ goal of 67,000 tickets sold, as stated by games organizers this past November.

ROOST Chief Operating Officer Mary Jane Lawrence said games organizers first ran a 20% discount aimed at tourists — lodging properties around town had QR codes for the sale, she said — and that ROOST stepped in after organizers realized they needed to sell tickets at a “deeper discount” to locals to further improve sales.

“Obviously all of those discounts stemmed from the pacing of the ticket sales. It all starts with, ‘How are the ticket sales going?’ and at some point, they said, ‘We’ve got to do something promotional to bolster them,'” Lawrence said. “That’s when they were starting to talk about the 20% off to the traveler, and that’s when it was brought up that we should do something more aggressive to the locals.”

Lundin said the locals sale was started as “a way to say thank you to the community for their support, and have the community come on out (and) be a part of this great event.” Lundin said that it’s been “largely locals” buying tickets for the games.

As of Monday, the top-selling ticket, with more than 1,100 sold, was a package for the men’s gold medal hockey game and the games’ closing ceremony. The hockey game will take place at the 1980 Herb Brooks Arena at the Olympic Center, which has the capacity to seat 7,700 people.

Lundin said curling events, which will be held at the newly renovated Saranac Lake Civic Center, are also popular, with a total of 1,200 tickets being sold. Other popular events include Alpine skiing at Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington, the opening ceremony this Thursday, men’s and women’s hockey, and snowboarding and big air events that will take place at Gore Mountain in North Creek.

Tickets are being sold online at https://tinyurl.com/4ayaw57e. To receive the discount, click on “Redeem coupon” in the shopping cart when checking out and type LOCALS40 in the “Code” box.

A local person who bought a full-price ticket for the games before the discount started on Jan. 1 can’t be retroactively reimbursed for a portion of their ticket to receive the sale price, according to Lawrence.

“There’s no way for the system to retroactively discount tickets,” she said.

The latest estimates from organizers say 1,443 athletes from 46 countries are expected to compete in the upcoming games.

Officials with FISU (the International University Sports Federation) are following the International Olympic Committee’s recommendation to exclude Russian and Belarusian athletes from sporting events in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

–

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly compared the 1,443 athletes expected to participate in the games to the organizers’ early estimate of 2,500 — but the 2,500 figure included both athletes and delegates, not just athletes, organizers say. The Enterprise regrets the error. The link to the ticket sales has also been updated.