Rio Olympics - so many vacant seats

[bojorojo]

Why can't the organisers reduce the price of the seats or get children involved? The number of empty seats is an embarrassment. We know ordinary Rio residents are poor, so why set the prices so high meaning the stadiums are half empty? Even the athletics today was a disgrace. Why is the Olympics in a city where the only sport anyone cares about is football?

Bonkers decision. And look at the result.

Alot of these empty seats are sponsors (who do turn up) seats they also happen to be the best seats!!

I'd prefer a country where people can stay away and the organisers be embarrassed to one such as China where children and then adults were conscripted in to make the venues look full.

It is a massive shame. The tickets amounted to 47,000 free tickets to the olympics and 500,000 for the paraolympics. In the year before an election city governments cannot provide free services by law, unless there is a state of emergency. It's supposed to stop city government corruption so they spend money throughout their term rather than do lots of great things in the final year. It is a very deep and sad pitfall of a system which is supposed to help.

I don't know if it will be resolved. I read the tickets were free and it's free services that are the problem so not sure about the payment system, I can't find any information on that. It's going before a judge and the city are appealing the decision to suspend the ticket distribution. It is a tough call because Brazil is trying to clean up political corruption. This is a serious violation if it looks like they are trying to gain votes. The investigation mainly needs to know if the agencies distrubuting the tickets have political motivation.

Rafaela Silva won gold, she grew up in the famous City of God favela and proved to the world and most importantly to the children in big city favelas that you don't have to be rich to be top in the sport you love.

Also there have been some school-olympics links and involvement, like there was in London.

Re the cycling - it was a wet weekday. Also the 2012 road races were a massive road block, people couldn't go anywhere else so might as well watch for the 10 secs it takes for the event to pass.