Isaac Makwala, centre, posted with Peter Beattie, left, and Mark Peters ©ITG

Around 150,000 tickets remain available with four days to go until the start of the Commonwealth Games, including between 600 and 700 for the Opening Ceremony, it was revealed here today. 

Gold Coast 2018 officials claim to be delighted with sales so far, however, and believe that the arrival of high-profile athletes such as Botswana sprinter Isaac Makwala will raise the profile and boost sales further. 

Preliminary events in sports, including athletics, as well as squash and table tennis, are among those where there is still high availability of tickets.

Tickets could still be available on the door for these events.

"We are really pleased and have less than 10 per cent available overall," Gold Coast 2018 chief executive Mark Peters said here today.

"The majority of them are actually in track and field for preliminary events.

"Everyone wants to be at the finals in the night-time, but what we are saying is all the athletes running or throwing in track and field are also doing it in those daytime heats.

"There's about 40,000 out of the 150,000 [available] there, also in Cairns and Townsville in basketball there's about 20,000 seats and we really sympathise with both those cities at the moment as they've had a pretty big rain-dump in the last couple of weeks.

"But they [preliminary tickets] traditionally come on board late in the piece."

Gold Coast 2018 are stepping-up their social media ticketing drive ©Gold Coast 2018/Twitter
Gold Coast 2018 are stepping-up their social media ticketing drive ©Gold Coast 2018/Twitter

Peters continued: "Some sports like squash and the preliminaries of table tennis, they aren't sports we know that well and we have about 20,000 there.

"So if we look at the 150,000, 60 or 70 per cent of them are from a couple of sports."

Peters also announced that, of 7,000 extra swimming tickets which went on sale last week, between 3,000 and 3,500 remain available.

He claimed they will not give away seats for free, but may use volunteers and other Games workers to fill plug any empty gaps.

"Are we confident we are going to sell every seat?" Peters said.

"No one ever sells every seat, there's always one or two around.

"But we'll have 95 per cent which for a regional city is absolutely spectacular."

Commonwealth Games Federation President Louise Martin also claimed to be delighted with ticket sales so far.

"I think its fantastic what they've sold," she said.

"Those [left] will go.

"That's not a lot at all and I think they have done tremendously well."