More than a week after the closing ceremony in Brazil, the Australian Olympic Committee is continuing an internal inquiry into how athletes came to be supplied with stickers to place over their accreditation placards in order for them to be able to sit in the athletes' section to watch what was an eagerly awaited Boomers match.

While nine athletes – among them rowers, cyclists and archers – were fined 10,000 reais ($4092) after being held at a police station and then a major events court for more than 10 hours until 5.30am, it has now emerged that there were many more Australian athletes in attendance at the game without tickets who escaped the attention of authorities.

AOC director of media and communications Mike Tancred confirmed to Fairfax Media on Monday that the investigation had found that the other athletes had recycled tickets to get into the match.

While accredited personnel, such as athletes, can wander into most Olympic venues, tickets are distributed to national organising committees and onwards to others such as the media for high-demand events such as the swimming finals.

The Boomers' semi-final on the third last day of the Games, which they ultimately lost by 26 points before being denied a bronze medal against Spain, was one of them.

The Australians had 25 such tickets in their possession but about 80 athletes were able to gain access to the Carioca Arena basketball stadium with them by a process of having those already inside passing tickets on to others waiting outside.

The ploy to recycle tickets was hardly a major offence in itself. Past Olympians have spoken about sneaking into venues to support teammates as among their favourite memories and on this occasion there was ample room in the public section where the 80 athletes sat separate from those with stickers on their accreditations who would end up being charged by police for falsifying a document. They were able to all gain entry because the tickets were not scanned by the gate attendants.

However, the attention police in Rio gave to those who had tampered with their accreditations to see the game suggests the other Australians may have been fortunate not to have had the ticket recycling exercise discovered.

There was a belief that Brazilian authorities had used the stickers affair as an opportunity to hit back after weeks of bad publicity about the host city and its crime and in particular the exaggerations of American swimmer Ryan Lochte about being held at gunpoint during a night out.

Australia's chef de mission at the Olympics Kitty Chiller was adamant in Rio that the athletes detained were not at fault and the AOC paid the fines for the nine: cyclists Ashlee Ankudinoff and Melissa Hoskins; rugby sevens captain Ed Jenkins; archers Alec Potts and Ryan Tyack; rowers Olympia Aldersey, Fiona Alber and Lucy Stephan; and hockey player Simon Orchard.

While an investigation continues the likelihood is that responsibility will fall on officials from the AOC's athlete services division, four of whom were flown home before the end of the Games to avoid winding up under police scrutiny as well. Chiller had reportedly warned them against the practice of placing stickers on accreditations midway through the Olympics.