"allantracy" wrote in message
...


The main reason for the empty seats is that a large percentage are given
away free to sponsors and national (as in "other nations") Olympic and
sports organisations.

The various sporting associations are allocated seats so their
officials (mostly volunteers) and competitors can get to see some of
the Olympics as well.

Obviously, at the start of the games, many of those are still busy
with their own events but, as the games progress and many of the early
events are concluded, they can find time to take in the rest of the
games and the problem of empty seats is then lessened.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yeah,

what part of the above stops them saying to LOCOG,

"We can't use these seats, you can sell them to normal punters"?

tim

Yeah,

what part of the above stops them saying to LOCOG,

"We can't use these seats, you can sell them to normal punters"?


I do believe that's what actually happened but as the games progressed
the amount of unused seats reduced in number.

The allocation of such tickets was a contractual requirement of the
IOC but it was in no one's interest to have all those empty seats so,
once the problem was recognised, all involved quickly agreed to make
them available.

On Tue, 14 Aug 2012 13:46:53 -0700 (PDT)
allantracy wrote:

Yeah,

what part of the above stops them saying to LOCOG,

"We can't use these seats, you can sell them to normal punters"?


I do believe that's what actually happened but as the games progressed
the amount of unused seats reduced in number.

The allocation of such tickets was a contractual requirement of the
IOC but it was in no one's interest to have all those empty seats so,
once the problem was recognised, all involved quickly agreed to make
them available.

Except that its happened at every recent olympics. Lets not pretent the
olympics are run for the general public - they're mainly run for the olympic
committee with the athletes as an aside. The public are irrelevant.

It was bad enough that Bliar thought it would be a good idea to waste billions
of our tax money on this tedious entertainment event but just to rub our noses
in it you had to pay twice if you wanted to attend - once via tax , once via
the ticket. Which is a bloody insult.

B2003

On Aug 14, 7:34*pm, "tim....." wrote:
"allantracy" *wrote in message

...



The main reason for the empty seats is that a large percentage are given
away free to sponsors and national (as in "other nations") Olympic and
sports organisations.

The various sporting associations are allocated seats so their
officials (mostly volunteers) and competitors can get to see some of
the Olympics as well.

Obviously, at the start of the games, many of those are still busy
with their own events but, as the games progress and many of the early
events are concluded, they can find time to take in the rest of the
games and the problem of empty seats is then lessened.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------*----

Yeah,

what part of the above stops them saying to LOCOG,

"We can't use these seats, you can sell them to normal punters"?

Because to be allowed into the area where those seats are located
requires additional security screening. Provisions had not been made
to screen ordinary members of the public to that standard on an ad-hoc
basis.

Robin