30 July 2003

Bloomberg to attend Games
Diario Libre reports that New York City’s mayor, Michael Bloomberg, will travel to Santo Domingo
to be present for the Friday, 1 August opening of the Pan American Games. He is scheduled to
arrive on Friday at 8am, in time to attend a breakfast with the members of the Pan Am Sports
Organization and the Organizing Committee of the Santo Domingo Pan Am Games. At 11am he will head
for Baní, where a mass will be held in the name of those Dominicans who died on Flight AA587 in
November 2001. Upon his return to Santo Domingo, his agenda will include a meeting with US
Ambassador Hans Hertell, followed by the opening ceremonies of the Pan Am Games at the Juan Pablo
Duarte Olympic Stadium.

Government stations to air Pan Am Games
Only stations managed by the government will transmit the Pan Am Games in the Dominican Republic.
Channel 4 and Telecentro (Channel 13) and RNN (Channel 27), both stations under governmental
intervention, will transmit Pan Am Games footage, adding to the organizational cost of the Games.
Private TV stations chose not to pay for the service. Jorge Suncar, of the Organizing Committee,
explained that other Dominican stations are not authorized to provide live coverage of the Games.
He said the rules establish that once the competitions are over, they may pass three minutes of
the event, three times a day, with a time span of three hours between each transmission. He said
that once the events are over, the images can be edited and commented on air. CBC, the Canadian
broadcasting company, is responsible for the footage. Suncar said that 14 Latin American stations
had paid for the rights to the live coverage. He did not mention any US station.

RD$200 tickets to Pan Am sold out
Hoy newspaper reports that the general admission tickets to the opening ceremonies of the Pan Am
Games on Friday, 1 August were bought up just hours after going on sale. The tickets became
available at El Nacional Supermarkets in the early afternoon of Monday, 28 July, after a computer
system problem delayed the opening of the box office outlets all the morning. Hoy says the
tickets available to the general public were sold out that same day, suggesting that very few
went up for sale. The newspaper speculates unnamed political parties could have bought up large
numbers of the tickets. The newspaper says that tickets at price levels of RD$1,000 and RD$3,500
are still available. http://panamgames2003.com/buying_event_tickets.html
 

Source: http://dr1.com

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