RIDDLE ME THIS:
Other than the olympic action as highlighted by NBC, what is the SECOND most noticeable aspect of the olympics to date?

ANSWER (as if you haven't already guessed):
The incredibly, unthinkably empty stands!

Yes, I know there were similar issues in Sydney a few years ago, but it was a much smaller problem for Australia, and no problem at all for the US for both the games in Salt Lake and in Atlanta. But, just to offer a bit of perspective, 9.5 million tickets were sold in Sydney while, so far, in Greece, only 2.9 million tickets have been sold.

And to think that tickets for the olympics in Atlanta and Salt Lake were being scalped for thousands of dollars here in the US!

Not that I expect every event to be packed, but, really, it's the opportunity to see the best talent in the world... And where are all the international visitors?

On Saturday night, Bob Costas came on after NBC had finished televising events for the day to comment that, because of a major religious holiday, many citizens of Greece were not at the events. Apparently, NBC decided to give this Public Service Announcement on behalf of the Greek Olympic Committee to help combat the impression that the olympics were not popular there.

In contrast to Costas' comments, Yahoo News quotes Greek Olympic officials as saying that light attendance was expected for some events. Why? Because of their "lack of popularity" with Greek citizens.

Okay, so some events, like Fencing, are not as popular as, say, Basketball, or Swimming, or even one of the signature events of the summer olympics, Men's and Woman's gymnastics. Makes sense to me.

But last night my wife and I noticed there were TONS of empty seats for Woman's Gymnastics. Not having a packed stadium at an event like this is an insult to the competitors and, in my opinion, a terrible insult to other nations who vied for the honor of hosting these events.

My wife looked at me at one point and said, "would you like to fly to Greece?" No doubt we could get seats to any event we wanted to see.

From the blogging community, I could only find a couple of sites with any information or commentary on this issue:

The Olympics 2004 Blog notes that olympic organizers are planning to give 500,000 tickets away to help bolster attendence at events. This site is reporting that exhorbitant prices charged by hotels and other establishments in Greece, mixed with terrorism fears, have kept people away. I would note that there were even greater fears of terrorism at the Sydney Olympics and similar comments related to price gouging as well, and they still sold 9.5 million tickets!

A post for the Athens 2004 Blog posted that they were able to find empty seats for the Dream Team nightmare game at center court near the floor that looked as if they were reserved for officials but which they used for the entire game.

In other words, not an impressive amount of commentary on this issue. I guess we'll have to label this a "developing story." Please leave a comment or send me any information that you might have regarding this issue. I can be reached via email at this address: david@viewpointjournal.com

David Flanagan
Viewpointjournal.com