Delegates flying to the Philippines for the coming 2019 Southeast Asian Games will be getting free plane tickets when they come in and out of Manila.
Athletes, coaches and officials will be given a plane ride though Philippine Airlines, which is sponsoring $2-million worth of airfare.
Rep. Abraham “Bambol” Tolentino, who heads the Sports Department of the Philippine SEA Games Organizing Committee, said this was made possible after PAL came in as a gold sponsor for the games.
“They will come here through PAL and flights that have been sponsored and booked from where they came from in the region,” said Tolentino.
Aside from the gold package, organizers have offered three types of packages to sponsors, with $3 million for platinum and $500,000 for silver.
The games’ opening ceremony, which is expected to have a festive atmosphere, is set to be on Nov. 30 at the 60,000-seat Philippine Arena in Bulacan.
Organizers have now plunged into a series of meetings to tackle logistics, transportation, the equipment and the billeting at the Athletes’ Village at the New Clark City in Capas, Tarlac and other venues in Metro Manila and Bulacan.
The series of deliberations got started following last week’s technical delegation meeting.
So far, at least five events were removed from the calendar of events that will be played.
The removal of five events from three sports disciplines were done after the delegates spent a day doing some fine-tuning on the games’ calendar.
Among those taken out of the list were two events in kurash, one in underwater hockey and another in sambo.
The number of sports disciplines is still at 56, but the number of events is down to 521.
