Okay, this story makes me smile.
BEIJING, Aug. 13 — Chinese Olympic organizers acknowledged Tuesday they were struggling to handle an unforeseen and baffling problem inside Summer Games venues and at the showpiece Olympic Park.
Not enough people.
Two weeks after announcing they had sold every one of the record 6.8 million tickets offered for the Games, Olympics officials expressed dismay at the large numbers of empty seats at nearly every event and the lack of pedestrian traffic throughout the park, the 2,800-acre centerpiece of the competition.
It’s not just one or two venues that are having this problem either. The Chinese government gave away scads of tickets and not just to the Games’ sponsors and high-profile folks either; state-run businesses and government agencies got large blocks of tickets to give away to workers,. Except the workers don’t seem to be particularly interesgted in running the security gauntlet that separates the glittering venues from the hoi polloi.
Another big reason for the problem is that the Chinese government made it so difficult for normal tourists to get in, thanks to overwhelming ChiCom paranoia, that a lot of people have just stayed home. The article notes that local Beijing hotels are way down on their occupancy rates from where they’d normally be.
Now the ChiComs are feeling the heat from the IOC who were expecting a big show and lots of smiling faces in the seats. It’s gotten so bad that the government is sending in official cheering squads, and so are some of the companies that have gotten free tickets.
I hope the attendance problem gets worse and the Chinese government ends up truly embarrassed.
John J. Miller had the best line on this story:
You wouldn’t expect the world’s most populous country to have this problem. It’s almost as bad as a Washington Nationals game.
Ouch.
Tags: 2008 Olympics, Beijing, China
They should have anticipated this and had “seat fillers” ready, like at the Oscars.
Based on the busloads and busloads of Chinese tourists I saw in the district over this past weekend, it looks like they all decided to skip the hassle and come to the US instead.