Lackluster ticket sales have meant low turnout at many events, such as the 200-meter preliminaries on Tuesday. (Photo: Dylan Martinez/Reuters)
Not even Usain Bolt is a guarantee of strong turnout at the Rio Games, which have been plagued by lackluster ticket sales.
It was a busy Tuesday morning for the Olympic track and field meet. Americans claimed gold and silver in the men’s triple jump. Brazil’s hopes for a women’s pole-vaulting victory foundered. Usain Bolt jogged to victory in a 200-meter heat.
But the stands of Olympic Stadium were virtually empty.
“Just look at the stands and you feel like you aren’t at the Olympics,” said British 1500-meter runner Chris O’Hare, when asked about the pressure of competition.
Empty seats have been a nagging embarrassment for the Rio Olympics since the Games began. But the track competition that began last Friday has exposed the broad extent of the problem.
A few thousand seats were empty when Bolt, the Games’ marquee star, won the men’s 100-meter sprint Sunday. On Monday night, the problem was even worse as huge swaths of the stadium were empty for Shaunae Miller’s dramatic dive to win the women’s 400-meter and the hometown pole-vault gold for Brazil’s Thiago Braz da Silva.
Olympics officials say that ticket sales have improved and attendance has been climbing—they said they have sold around 87% of their available seats, or about 5.7 million tickets.
Olympics spokesman Mario Andrada has blamed the low turnout at events in part on ticketholders getting discouraged by long lines and difficult transportation on the first days of the Games. On the sales front, Brazilians are only recently starting to embrace the Olympics, Andrada said.
“If we find an ingenious way to sell more tickets, we will do so,” Andrada said Tuesday, noting that ticket booths have been set up at venues and in downtown to encourage prospective fans.
“We understand that some athletes are disappointed,” Andrada said. “We understand that the media is worried. We are worried.”
Of the 6.5 million total available tickets for Olympic events, 70% were designated for Brazilians, the rest offered abroad and to sponsors, Andrada said.
Skittish guests of corporate sponsors are another reason cited for the low turnout. An estimated 5 to 7% of the total tickets went to sponsors, but concerns about political unrest, economic instability and Zika have kept many away.
About a third of the corporate sponsors’ tickets have been returned to the Rio 2016 organizing committee and resold to the public, Andrada said.
As the Games have progressed, Brazilians appear to be getting excited about witnessing the first Olympics in South America, said Erich Beting, director at São Paulo-based sporting consulting firm Máquina do Esporte.
“Ticket (sales) have been going well or even very well,” Beting said. “Brazilians are getting more involved, as no big problem has happened.”
Beting said some are buying the cheapest tickets available just to get a glimpse inside the Olympic Park.
Carla Cristina Passarelli Gelli, a 42-year-old São Paulo resident, said she, her 18-year-old son and his girlfriend were eyeing three tickets to the taekwondo competition later this week for a total cost of 280 reais ($88), with the main goal of touring the Olympic Park.
“We are going take photos and experience the atmosphere in the Olympic Park,” Gelli said.
But Gelli’s reasoning was also rooted in cost: She had hoped to attend rhythmic gymnastics, or a sport where Brazilian teams tend to be strong, such as volleyball. But all the tickets she found online were too expensive, she said, between about 300 reais ($94) and 500 reais ($157) each.
Asked why organizers didn’t slash ticket prices to encourage attendance, Andrada said the funding of the Games depended on ticket sales.
Local organizers say they’ve exceeded their ticket-sales revenue goals of 1.045 billion reais ($329 million). But that has not solved Rio 2016’s financial woes: The committee is short of its 7.4-billion-real operating budget for the Olympic and Paralympic Games, organizers said.
Andrada said that 285,000 tickets have been donated to public schools and to nongovernmental organizations. “But it’s not enough to give the tickets away, to solve the issue with empty seats,” he said.
In a separate promotion, the city of Rio de Janeiro had planned to buy 47,000 Olympic tickets and 500,000 Paralympic tickets to hand them out free, mainly to public school students. But in June, a judge blocked the city from going forward with the giveaway, saying such handouts could influence upcoming municipal elections.
Rio subsequently cancelled the reserved tickets, according to a spokeswoman for the city.
View full article here.
By Rebecca Davis O’Brien and Luciana Magalhaes
Source: Wall Street Journal
