You would think the Olympics are as hot a ticket as tickets get. Once every four years, people play for national pride on the grandest stage and blah blah blah, and other people want to go see that. Or do they?


Turns out, bureaucrats in Beijing are having a bit of trouble filling seats for their events, and, being that they’re the image-conscious Chinese authority, have resorted to borderline dishonesty to resolve the problem.


From the UK GUARDIAN:

At the Capital Gymnasium earlier this week there were three blocks of several hundred yellow-shirted spectators cheering loudly for Venezuela as they took on the USA at volleyball. Yesterday, organisers claimed that the cheerleaders were in fact spectators, but today Wang Wei, vice-president of Bocog, conceded that they had been recruited by venue managers to fill seats.

“We are concerned about the fact we do not have full stadia,” he said. “We think it is due to the weather, the humidity and then the rain, and on the first couple of days there were not many spectators who showed up.”

Venezuelan volleyball has never been so popular.

Unfortunately for the Chinese, it seems an impossible task to try and mask whole swaths of empty seats. Even those they can find to fill in — well, let’s just say it’ll be pretty obvious that Angola’s handball team (does Angola have a handball team?) won’t be attracting the genuine concern of hundreds of Chinese people organically. It’s probably better to just leave the stadia alone. After all, no one expects fullness at every event. We promise, China - we’ll still tolerate/love you.

You'd think in a country with 50% unemployment they wouldn't have problems finding people to fill the seats.

whats weird bout so much shit being empty is all the tickets for most everything is/were sold out...

Well China must have a fuck load of ticket touts then!

from what i heard them say on tv was scalpers supposedly bought tons of tickets and people just aint paying what they want for a ticket. but who knows...

it's about time ticket scalpers got theirs...I don't think it's right to buy up a bunch of tickets and hike the price up on them

also being said was possibly protesters were buying up tickets too to keep people from going..

these Olympics are starting to resemble a circus....nice. Some sort of wierd mix of Jerry Springer and athletics....

i guess thats what happens when Communists get to run the show..110% total insane anal control freaks to the millimeter...i find it actually degrading and insulting to what the Olympics stand for..and most of all it may sound silly but all this bullshit really takes away alot of the pride and glamor so to speak of the olympics and makes china look even worse in the public world wide eye..

Sweet...maybe China can be the world's new most hated nation instead of the States.

no shit man.....i mean all america ever did was stage a little thing called the moon landing...big deal...lo china is pissing on the olympics...that is important shit! LOL

I dunno....as soon as Bush is gone I think most of the rest of the world will stop seeing us as assholes.....maybe.

i dunno man...we have had that title for a looooooong time..lol but i think the day we stop trying to rule the whole fucking world, it will be passed along to someone else.

like....China?