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Venues Plagued By Empty Seats Despite Reported Ticket Sales

Organizers have tried to fill seats by giving tickets to volunteers, school groups.GETTY IMAGES

POCOG spokesperson Sung Baik-yoo said that Games organizers were "within one percent of their target of 90 percent sold out," a figure that equals about 1 million tickets, according to Tariq Panja of the N.Y. TIMES. Yet the scene at venues in Pyeongchang from the ski slopes in the mountain cluster to the ice sports stadiums of Olympic Park "tells a story far different from Sung's pronouncements of success." Swaths of empty blue seats have been a "familiar backdrop despite organizers' efforts to fill in gaps by providing volunteers with so-called passion tickets" that allow them to attend events and by "bringing in school groups by the busload." So far, fans have been able to "show up right before the start of all but the most popular events and buy a ticket." It is "not just the spectators who have noticed." Norwegian Aksel Lund Svindal described completing his Gold Medal run in the men’s downhill on Thursday in front of a "mostly empty" grandstand as "a little bit strange." The low attendance "may be partly attributed to the fact that South Korea does not have a culture of Alpine sports." Empty seats are "not a problem unique to the Pyeongchang Games." Organizers of the last two Olympics -- Rio 2016 and Sochi 2014 -- also "found themselves under scrutiny as images of half-empty venues were beamed worldwide" (N.Y. TIMES, 2/15).

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