Olympiakos slash season ticket prices in ‘crisis offer’

By Graham Wood

Greek champions Olympiakos Piraeus are cutting season ticket prices for the new Super League season by up to 50 per cent in response to the country’s deepening debt crisis, the club announced on Wednesday.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has promised his government will submit “credible reform” proposals to its creditors as it seeks aid to avoid being forced out of the euro zone.

“We are experiencing an unprecedented crisis and the core issue for us is to give our love back to the supporters,” Olympiakos managing director Yiannis Vrentzos told a news conference.

“We are following closely what’s happening in Greek society and the difficulties and uncertainties that all fans are facing, and that is why we are providing unprecedented reductions of up to 50 per cent.”

Olympiakos said they had made more than 18,000 season tickets available for between 100-170 euros ($110.62-188.05), which is a discount of 30-50 per cent from last season depending on where the seats are in the Georgios Karaiskakis stadium.

Asked how the club had been affected by the current situation, Vrentzos said: “Olympiakos is a very strong company financially but these developments certainly don’t help.”

“We are planning with the scenario that everything will go well in terms of our budgets. For season tickets we have gone with the negative scenario, but obviously the best thing would be to know as soon as possible what’s going to happen.”

The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.