The quota system used to allocate tickets at last year's Rugby World Cup Sevens will be ditched in favour of a public sale for March's Peregrine Hong Kong Sevens, organisers revealed yesterday.
A return to the public-sale system was the best way to sell the 7,000 tickets to local rugby fans, Hong Kong Rugby Football Union commercial director David Roberts said.
Roberts said the sale was the fairest method because 3,800 more tickets would be issued this year compared with last year.
And there were no home international matches leading up to the Sevens.
'For the World Cup Sevens we only had 3,200 tickets to distribute locally. If we had had a public sale for the World Cup it's pretty certain that we would have had a lot of people queueing up for tickets and leaving empty-handed which would have been a bit unfair,' he said.
About 11,000 tickets will be distributed through the SAR's rugby clubs, the same number as the 1996 tournament.