ROME (AP) — Construction on the main hockey arena is still not finished. Spectator and media areas at the controversial sliding venue also need to be completed.

And with exactly two months to go to the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics, there is another major area that local organizers are concentrating on: only slightly more than half of the 1.5 million tickets for the games have been sold.

As the torch relay began in Rome on Saturday, only slightly more than 850,000 tickets had been sold.

While sales abroad are meeting expectations, interest among Italians remains low.

“That’s normal. The local fans get interested closer and I think the beginning of the torch relay will be a very important moment for people realizing that,” local organizing committee CEO Andrea Varnier told The Associated Press moments before the relay began.

A Black Friday promotion last week included three days of 20% discounts on tickets. And purchasers of both Olympics and Paralympics tickets have the chance to get lift passes for eight euros ($9) valid at every ski area in Lombardy between Dec. 9-22.

This week, more tickets for the Feb. 6 opening ceremony at the San Siro stadium and the men’s hockey gold medal game on Feb. 22 in Milan were put on sale.

“We had some tickets on the market a couple of days ago and they were sold out in in just a couple of hours,” Varnier said. “So there is interest.”

If past precedence is any indicator, the atmosphere was memorable at the 2006 Turin Winter Games — the last time Italy hosted an Olympics.

Still, organizers would have hoped for more demand after the last Winter Games in Beijing in 2022 were held mostly without fans because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Varnier pointed out that sales have been strong at the recently opened Milan Cortina store in front of the city’s cathedral, Piazza del Duomo.

“People are really going in and buying our merchandise, which is also a good sign,” he said.

As for the Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena — the new, 16,000-seat venue on the outskirts of Milan — the scheduled test event for next week had to be pushed back to January.

“We knew about the delays of the hockey arena and we are working with it, but now we are following the right pace,” Varnier said. “It has to be ready.”

Next week, the secondary hockey venue that has been set up in the Rho Fiera convention center will be tested by hosting under-20 world championship games.

These games will be held across a large swath of northern Italy and athlete parades for the opening ceremony will also be held simultaneously in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Livigno and Predazzo besides Milan.

“It is quite an effort, it’s the first time ever,” Varnier said. “It’s a very important message to have the athletes also staying in the mountain Villages to be able to participate in the ceremony. This was very well received by the NOCs (National Olympic Committees). … Also, the communities are very happy to have a piece of the ceremonies in their towns.”

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Andrew Dampf is at https://x.com/AndrewDampf

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AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics