diff --git a/contrib/lisp/org-odt.el b/contrib/lisp/org-odt.el
index 81abf5d4b..137a4d510 100644
--- a/contrib/lisp/org-odt.el
+++ b/contrib/lisp/org-odt.el
@@ -1825,7 +1825,8 @@ CATEGORY-HANDLE is used.  See
 (defun org-odt-fixup-label-references ()
   (goto-char (point-min))
   (while (re-search-forward
-	  "<text:sequence-ref text:ref-name=\"\\([^\"]+\\)\"/>" nil t)
+	  "<text:sequence-ref text:ref-name=\"\\([^\"]+\\)\">[ \t\n]*</text:sequence-ref>"
+	  nil t)
     (let* ((label (match-string 1))
 	   (label-def (assoc label org-odt-entity-labels-alist))
 	   (rpl (and label-def
@@ -2278,8 +2279,9 @@ Do this when translation to MathML fails."
 	   ;; time we would have seen and collected all the label
 	   ;; definitions in `org-odt-entity-labels-alist'.
 	   (org-odt-format-tags
-	    "<text:sequence-ref text:ref-name=\"%s\"/>" ""
-	    (org-add-props label '(org-protected t)))) t t)))))
+	    '("<text:sequence-ref text:ref-name=\"%s\">" .
+	      "</text:sequence-ref>")
+	    "" (org-add-props label '(org-protected t)))) t t)))))
 
 ;; process latex fragments as part of
 ;; `org-export-preprocess-after-blockquote-hook'. Note that this hook