Italy's early medals lift TV audiences and ticket sales

MILAN, Feb 9 : A medal-rich start by hosts Italy at the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics is translating into booming television audiences and strong in-person demand for what is shaping into a commercially successful Games, organisers said on Monday.

Italy has won nine medals including one gold, driving a surge of interest at home and putting them third in the table behind winter powerhouses Norway and the United States.

Among highlights for Italian fans was a gold medal for speed skater Francesca Lollobrigida, who celebrated with tears and wrapped in the tricolore national flag alongside her two-year-old son.

"These have been fantastic days for us. Enthusiasm is growing not only inside the venues. We are getting positive feedback from partners," Luca Casassa, Milano Games spokesperson, told a press conference on Monday.

Ticket sales also rose early in the Games. 

In the first two days, another 127,000 tickets were sold, taking the total to 1.2 million so far, said Andrea Francisi, the Olympics' chief games operations officer.

In the first few days of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, approximately 925,000 tickets were sold out of a final total of just over one million.

In PyeongChang 2018, South Korea, only less than 60 per cent of available tickets had been sold in the first few days. There can be no comparison with Beijing 2022 because tickets were not put on general sale due to the Covid emergency.

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Italy's strong start prompted questions from reporters about whether organisers had shaped the opening programme to favour disciplines most likely to deliver early medals for the hosts.

"No, we did not think about the programme in that way," Francisi said, smiling. "Italy has the advantage of playing at