In response to ever rising frustration voiced by sponsors about the lack of foot traffic in the Olympic sponsor village, the IOC will meet with the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee (BOCOG) tomorrow and ask it to allow the public to enter the Olympic Green.

Currently, access to the Green — where sponsors have spent millions of dollars building showcases that are 14,000- to 20,000-square-foot freestanding buildings — is restricted to ticket holders for events in that area. As a result, some sponsors expected 10,000 to 15,000 visitors a day but saw only 3,000 to 5,000 over the weekend.

“Here, it’s the policy of Chinese authorities (to restrict access), but the understanding is we have to do something about this,” said Gerhard Heiberg, chairman of the IOC Marketing Commission. “This is a challenge today, I hope, not the day after tomorrow.”

Heiberg said the IOC spoke with BOCOG about this once and the organization opened up “a bit,” but it tightened security again following the fatal stabbing of an American tourist on Saturday.

“This is unacceptable to us and to the sponsors, so again we are being promised that something will happen,” Heiberg said. “We’d like it to be possible for the public to get onto the Olympic Green to walk around, have a burger, have a Coke, go to Johnson & Johnson, see Samsung and so on without having a ticket to the Water Cube or the Bird’s Nest.”