Foreign fans of the Rugby Sevens made up slightly more than half of the audience at the matches last year, in a survey finding that is at odds with the sale of nearly 75 per cent of the tickets through local channels.
But the figure was consistent with the proportion of overseas spectators over the past few years, the Hong Kong Rugby Football Union said.
A spokesman for the union cited the possibility of tickets being distributed to people overseas with close ties to Hong Kong or former residents of the city.
'The Hong Kong Rugby Football Union has no control over the end user's choice of how to use their ticket allocations,' he said.
The city's most anticipated sports event is a source of frustration among ordinary rugby fans who wonder where the tickets have gone. Criticism was piled on the union earlier this year when it reduced the number of tickets sold to the public from 5,000 to 4,000 - just 10 per cent of the 40,000-seat Hong Kong Stadium in Happy Valley - giving priority to the local rugby community instead.
The decrease was coupled with a 20 per cent price increase to HK$1,500, the union said, pointing to a need to pay for rising costs to build and maintain artificial pitches.