Azernews.Az

By Amina Nazarli

The National Olympic Stadium in Baku will once again bring thousands of people together on June 28 to host the farewell event of the 17-day sporting festival—the first-ever European Games.

The closing ceremony is expected to draw a crowd of over 60,000 spectators to Baku’s Olympic stadium.

As a result, the same traffic pattern that was enforced during the opening ceremony will be used for the closing ceremony as well, according to the Intelligence Transport Management Center.

From 4pm to 2am on June 28, the following roads will be closed: from the circle on Heydar Aliyev Avenue to the Sabunchu Road circle and the circle from Parliament Avenue to its intersection with Mehti Huseyn and Teymur Elchin streets..

For those who will attend the closing ceremony, the center recommends using public transportation.

Baku Metro will operate in overtime from 6:00am to 2:00am, while buses servicing spectators to and from the venue will run from 05:00am until 02:00am.

Meanwhile, all of the tickets for the closing ceremony of the Baku 2015 Games had sold out in a very short period. Three days after the opening ceremony, the BEGOC, Baku 2015 Operation Committee sold all of the 38,500 remaining tickets.

The organizers promise that the closing ceremony will be as spectacular as the opening one.

For several days, local media outlets have dispelled rumors that following American pop singer Lady Gaga, who mesmerized the audience at the opening ceremony, Queen of pop Madonna will also arrive in Baku to perform at an equally extravagant farewell ceremony.

The organizers, however, are in no hurry to reveal this secret. According to Rashad Aliyev, a spokesman for BEGOC, the details of the closing ceremony will remain just as secretive as the opening ceremony did.

Baku was awarded the opportunity to face the Herculean task of hosting the inaugural European Games by the European Olympic Committee in December 2012.

The Games, attracting about 6,000 athletes from 50 countries in Europea, is a first-of-its-kind tournament.

The multi-sport competition features twenty sporting events, 16 of which are Olympic, while the other four—karate, basketball 3x3, beach soccer, and sambo—are new sports to this format.

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Amina Nazarli is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @amina_nazarli

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