Glasgow 2014 opening ceremony tickets go unsold

Hundreds of tickets for the centrepiece opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games remain on sale – just hours before the Queen is due to launch the event.

Rod Stewart is among those appearing at the ceremony. Picture: Getty

The Scotsman found widespread availability for the Celtic Park curtain-raiser, featuring stars such as Rod Stewart, on the official Glasgow 2014 website.

Five different categories were still on sale, ranging in price from £20-£250, although organisers refused to give an exact figure of remaining tickets.

Join us at 3pm today for a live Google Hangout panel discussion as David Ferguson and Stuart Bathgate look ahead to the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony with Scots athlete Gillian Cooke and sports psychologist Viki Penpraze

The arena’s capacity has been cut from 60,000 to just 35,000 to accommodate a giant TV screen.

Tickets also remain on sale for many other events at the Games, despite organisers previously claiming there had been “unprecedented demand”.

Although many events had previously been declared a sell-out, more than 100,000 “extra” tickets for all 17 sports were released in May. Organisers said at the time that they had been able to release more seats after finalising seating plans and freeing up “contingency” allocations.

They say more than 1.1 million tickets have been sold in advance, making the Games Scotland’s biggest ever sporting event.

Some 17,000 games tickets were still on sale earlier this month and many sports are still showing “high availability”.

A spokeswoman for Glasgow 2014 said: “Tickets continue to sell fast for the opening ceremony. ”

Meanwhile long queues snaked around George Square yesterday afternoon as staff struggled to cope with the last-minute demand for tickets.

Fans also said they were angry at having to queue up for well over an hour to collect pre-paid tickets from one of only three available booths.