It's been impossible not to notice, while watching the Olympics on television, that there are a whole lot of empty seats at the event venues in Beijing, even for some of the marquee sports, like gymnastics and basketball.
The New York Times explores:
"It is a challenge for us," Wang Wei, executive vice president of the Beijing organizing committee, said of the empty seats on Sunday. "We are now in the process of trying to manage that." ...The main reason seems to be that the Beijing organizing committee gave huge blocks of tickets to sponsors, meaning the fans who would like to attend are told that the events are sold out. But through the first five days of the Olympics, for the most part the sponsors are choosing not to use the seats.
"I've been hearing people complaining about that," said a 23-year-old volunteer working outside the Water Cube who identified herself as Ms. Chen. "As tickets are really hard to get, the fact that some of the best seats remained untaken through the whole game really upset people who really want to see the game but don't have the ticket."
I guess the lesson here is that whether the country is communist or capitalist, the real fans will come in second to the corporate fat cats. No surprise there.
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
8-12-2008 @ 9:32AM
Marc said...
Sponsors do get huge blocks of tickets with many being the best seats. The sponsors that are hosting guests in China have more tickets than guests and most do not have a plan in place to distribute the unused tickets even at the last minute. While in Salt Lake in 2002, my company had a plan to donate tickets through the local community and it did create a lot of goodwill.
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8-12-2008 @ 11:03AM
JCN said...
As long as the suits are satisfied, the assumption is, everyone is satisfied.
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8-12-2008 @ 12:24PM
mam said...
disgusting....as usual...no "ordinary" people can afford to go to sporting events here or abroad.
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8-12-2008 @ 1:56PM
SA said...
I think the biggest scam artist is NBC in the fact that everything we see on the West Coast is 3 hours delayed. If you want the up to date results, you log onto the computer. Every announcer says coming up "live", but what a joke!!!
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8-13-2008 @ 4:19PM
diana said...
Empty seats happen because thousands of people around the world were scammed by fake agents and had been getting fake tickets instead (largely from a scam website beijingticketing dotcom, the scammer Alan Scott from UK should be burned alive! I can't believe this slip the detection of the Olympics Committee) which obviously wouldn't allow them to attend the Olympics. It is also sad because there are scalpers who bought the real tickets in mass quantities and tried to sell them in black market for hefty price. Those who wanted to attend, couldn't get tickets, and weren't willing to pay the scalpers. Also, China turned down lots of visa applications overestimating the olympics attendance. My parents for example weren't able to get visas because they said the visa reserve was out. Now that we know they still need ppl, we all may apply for another visa and watch the rest of the game in Beijing if there are still opportunities.
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8-14-2008 @ 3:00AM
Steve Robinson said...
The sponsors did receive a lot, and USOC encouraged the U.S. based sponsors to provide their tickets to the families of athletes. Not sure if that was done, however.
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