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attendance at 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics

SSSdave

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Reports of low ticket sales have been ongoing in the weeks lead up to the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics. The subsequent cold windy weather once the games began has exacerbated the issue with viewers watching via television noticing numbers of empty seats and of more notice to we skiers, a lack of large crowds at alpine events beyond obvious visiting foreigners cheering on their athletes. Thus one wonders what has been going on with the Korean media and local people.

http://www.dw.com/en/winter-olympics-how-popular-are-these-games/a-42579979

http://www.marca.com/en/more-sports/2018/02/12/5a819fc4468aebb65a8b4678.html
 

Philpug

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I did notice that some of the outdoor vernues looked...well not at 100% capacity.
 

Rudi Riet

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I did notice that some of the outdoor vernues looked...well not at 100% capacity.

Often the local OOC will offer free tickets to volunteers from other events that aren't currently going on to fill empty stands.

That said: people often buy event tickets on specific days and times to try and see as much of the Games as possible. All the shifting of event dates wreaks havoc on such plans. These ticket holders can often resell their tickets, but I hear it's tougher to do at PyeongChang than at previous Olympics.

Also: the stands are the more expensive tickets (too expensive IMHO). There seem to be a decent number of people in the cheaper standing room areas - not record-breaking crowds, but not desolate, either.
 

pchewn

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I haven't noticed if this trend is present at the indoor/protected venues like speed skating, figure skating, hockey ..... ??? But yes, the alpine and the snowboarding events looked short on spectators.
 

trailtrimmer

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I have an acquaintance who is a ski tech for the nordic team. The pictures he's posting are enlightening. New hotels that were not built in time, and never will be used. People living in squalor 100 yards from stadiums. Temporary store fronts that will be gone as soon as the olympics close up shop. Complete waste.
 
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fatbob

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I have an acquaintance who is a ski tech for the nordic team. The pictures he's posting are enlightening. New hotels that were not built in time, and never will be used. People living in squalor 100 yards from stadiums. Temporary store fronts that will be gone as soon as the olympics close up shop. Complete waste.

See also why does no credible country actually want the Olympics anymore. IOC really need to get a grip. The show is still great because its the greatest brand in sports and athletes build their 4 year programmes around it but the rest of the crap is deplorable.
 

Christy

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For me, it does detract from the overall excitement of the event. There weren't any spectators along the downhill course and with so few at the bottom, it had the atmosphere of a training run. I was a little sad for Aksel, who said:

“If we had this race in Italy, Austria, Norway, Sweden, it would be packed with 50,000 people,” Svindal said. To be fair, he said, he doubted people in Norway would fill an arena for short-track speedskating, like they did here, but he still wished he had won his medal amid a more raucous atmosphere. “It’s a bit sad.”

It sounds like there are a lot of reasons--lack of interest/familiarity in winter sports amongst the Koreans, perceived threat of war, tickets given to sponsors that weren't used, high ticket prices, lack of transportation to venues (this was a big one), mix ups with ticket purchases--and there is blame to go around. This happened in Rio and Sochi too. It also seems that there are a lot of potential solutions. I don't remember how well attended the Beijing summer games were but perhaps due to the sheer number of people in China and the general success of their summer Olympics the next winter games might be better attended? I went to 3 alpine events at the 2010 Olympics at scoring tickets (and lodging) was no small feat so it's not a decline in popularity of the games themselves.

I haven't noticed if this trend is present at the indoor/protected venues like speed skating, figure skating, hockey

I read that short track is one of the few sold out events. There have been quite a few empty seats for figure skating (team and pairs ) so far.

Good article in today's NY Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/sports/olympics/olympics-venues-empty.html

merlin_133890774_6029cc11-409d-4051-a468-99c052e42d81-superJumbo.jpg
 
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SSSdave

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The current winter olympics structure began in 1924 that included far fewer events than we now have. Today's expanded winter games structure with its need for several special facilities at world competition levels including spectator viewing and lodging facilities, media infrastructure, etc, requires a much greater host city/nation expense than those early games. In order to make such games of reasonable length given the more types of sports with more types of contests within each also means many contests are held today at the same times as other events with television ending up just being able to put together less than ideal bits of this and that for viewing of most popular events while others have little or no public awareness. Of course the bloated summer games have become even more unwieldy for some of these same basic reasons.

Thus the obvious solution is to break up olympic games into more manageable chunks and host such games in more appropriate locations for each sport where facilities already exist because they are in regions where such sports are already popular. With a bit of web searching I find these ideas have in fact already been discussed in recent years and I am in ignorance just now aware of such.

The whole ice skating focus has become such a media monster that it has annoyingly moved focus away from alpine and nordic sports. Today given modern indoor refrigeration technologies, there is no longer a need to hold such contests in cold climates other than there are more likely local enthusiasts. Even on this board there are grumblings about turning on one's tv only to see ice skating events instead of outdoor snow events that are simultaneously occurring.

Another issue is the scope of different events no longer fits the scope of popular sports interests of host sites. And I suspect that is what is happening in these 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics regarding our alpine events. How much better are events for athletes as well as we tv viewers when there are huge cheering crowds like we have at our world cup alpine events in places like Kitzbuhel.

By breaking up the olympics into logical chunks in places they are appreciated, where infrastructure already exists, the different sports could be staged sequentially over a greater period, allowing individual contest events to have better enthusiast visibility, media focus, more thorough features on the many athletes versus just a few of the most well known, across the world. Much more of course that others including some on this board have no doubt already thought out in much more depth.
 
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Bart Parnell

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Dave, I like what you're saying but the bright blue is so hard to read!

Personally if I were the Lord of Skiing... I'd dump the IOC and FIS entirely and keep the classic traditional races as independent entities. Then I'd encourage some entrepreneur to launch a new international circuit of races that are easier and less expensive to host and compete in. I'd put limitations on equipment (maybe limit racers to only 2 pairs of skis per event). Do a qualifier like other events and then run the final race with a smaller group (15-20) of competitive skiers so there is some tension and excitement.

And I'd do a more traditional slalom (more open than it is now) and GS (more turny than it is now) and SG, no DH other than the classics. Schedule the races for post Christmas to mid-March, not October. It'd be more manageable, fair minded, safer, and more viewable. Get Austria to back this and everyone else falls in line.

In general all these large sports organizations become corrupt... IOC, Soccer, Car Racing, Boxing, NFL, NBA, MLB, cycling, any of them really. It's where criminals go to become management. At the least it's a bunch of overly Type A personalities battling.

Alas this is just spitballing beer coffee talk.
 
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SSSdave

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New organizations have begun to take notice. Yesterday from the New York Times:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/15/sports/olympics/olympics-venues-empty.html

Despite host organizer claiming 90% of tickets have been sold, the reality of empty seats tends to make that claim suspicious given there are a list of financial reasons why host organizations and the IOC would rather have the games seem as ever popular. One of the pc excuses has been that empty seats are due to foreign contingents and sponsors for the athletes not showing up. Same excuses were voiced at Sochi and Rio. However the obvious numbers of visible empty seats in stands and lack of fans along outdoor venues makes that excuse hollow. Their statements may be true while the true weight of the statement is made purposely vague by what it fails to quantify. In other words the foreign contingents may only be reasonable for about 10% of empty seats while other reasons responsible for the bulk of empty seats remain unmentioned because it is embarrassing. In South Korea, bus loads of school kids are now being bussed in in order to experience events that may be unfamiliar sports to locals in part to disguise reality.

Back to the foreign contingents and sponsors for the athletes, I'd bet one of the last questions they want to hear is a request for at least vague details on how many seats were bought as blocks by the different participating countries. Another facet is 90% of games revenue is already covered by media rights and corporate sponsorships, so the actual local attendance viewing games is not much a financial motivation to organizers nor local media.
 

Karen_skier2.0

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Thus the obvious solution is to break up olympic games into more manageable chunks and host such games in more appropriate locations for each sport where facilities already exist because they are in regions where such sports are already popular. With a bit of web searching I find these ideas have in fact already been discussed in recent years and I am in ignorance just now aware of such.

This is why I am so excited for the 2019 FIS World Championships in Utah next year. Freestyle, freeskiing, and snowboarding. I just really wish Alpine would have gotten onboard. I attended a lot of different events at the SLC Olympics for two weeks and it was amazing! The energy was incredible, and of course the athletes were amazing. I did get to a lot of figure skating events, but that's all I could handle.

On the flip side, the Olympics is about bringing together the best of all sports. How often do you see a bobsledder taking a photo with a snowboarder? Every athlete wants to go watch a hockey game or curling. I don't know if you would lose the "Olympic spirit" by breaking them up. However, since there are fewer and fewer venues will be able to handle the climate required for the outdoor portions of the games, we may be forced to do this.
 
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SSSdave

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Thanks Karen for that input as it has piqued my interest in possibly making an extended several week road trip out to SLC next winter for both watching some of that action as well as a chance to ski most of your resorts. Haven't been out to Utah for skiing in decades.
 

mdf

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Thus the obvious solution is to break up olympic games into more manageable chunks ...

If you do that, you might as well just quit doing them. After all, most of the individual sport organizations already have yearly World Championships that nobody (in the mainstream) pays any attention to.
 

Ohioskier

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The IOC needs to take fans and filling up venues into account. If this were held in Salt Lake City or Lake Placid each event would be packed. Probably same with most Western European countries.
 
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SSSdave

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If you do that, you might as well just quit doing them. After all, most of the individual sport organizations already have yearly World Championships that nobody (in the mainstream) pays any attention to.

Indeed and worth kicking around in a discussion here. That is why at 4 year intervals, it might need to be structured more in well considered chunks of related sports like snow sports, ice sports. If the Olympics both winter and summer were split up somewhat, there would be a vacuum created in the media world that whatever came next would need to be uniquely interesting enough above what they already have. It may need to be packaged and presented differently and take advantage of newer video technologies.

For example as someone that has worked in broadcasting equipment hardware, it ought to be possible in ski racing to overlay a moving color dot sampled from the skier with whatever lead time on an active skier coming down a course. Thus viewers would be able to better gauge how individuals are actually doing versus the lead skier in an exciting moment to moment way. Currently we are limited to a few split times however getting more granularity is a matter of more sensor points along a course and although it may sound complicated, it is just a matter of getting engineers to do it. The strategy is to make our snow sports as exciting as they can be. I thought the Women's Super G camera video presentation was considerably better than anything we watched just a couple decades ago.

But then again one has to wonder in this era with so many leisure entertainments available to people worldwide, if snow sport viewing will ever be of much interest above the noise beyond snowy regions.
 

mdf

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Your have probably seen the overlay we here they show the relative positions of two skiers along the course. It would be amusing to see a "virtual mass start" where they overlay everyone for the whole race.
 

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