Olympics-Tokyo 2020 official tears up explaining ticket cancellations

FILE PHOTO: Deputy Executive Director, Marketing & Senior Director of Ticketing Tokyo 2020 Suzuki Hidenori gives an explanation of the ticket handling process, following the decision on the upper limits on spectator numbers, during a news conference in the headquarters of the Tokyo Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games, in Tokyo, Japan June 23, 2021. Stanislav Kogiku/Pool via REUTERS

TOKYO (Reuters) - An Olympic official in charge of ticket sales choked up with tears on Friday as he apologised to people who had their tickets cancelled because of a last-minute move to hold the Games without spectators in the Tokyo area due to the pandemic.

"We've done all we could to meet the expectations of those who had bought the tickets and I feel a deep sense of pain," Hidenori Suzuki from the organising committee's marketing department told a briefing explaining the procedures related to the cancellation of the tickets.