For more than a year, many Londoners have complained about their inability to obtain Olympic tickets, especially for marquee events like swimming and gymnastics. Then on Saturday, the first full day of competition here revealed unsightly swaths of empty seats at marquee events like swimming and gymnastics.
How did that happen? Blame a mix of prime tickets that go unused by corporate sponsors, international sports federations and rights holders. Adding to the unfortunate visuals: Bored media stayed away in droves for preliminary competitions in some sports. This is a common Olympics phenomenon, especially early in the Games when medals aren't yet on the line.
As a result, patches of empty seats were visible Saturday morning at North Greenwich Arena, where men's gymnastics qualifying was under way. The same was true at the Aquatics Center, where superstar Michael Phelps swam in preliminary heats. At Wimbledon, Serena Williams played at a mostly crowded Centre Court stadium that was nonetheless blotched with sections of a couple of hundred empty seats each.
Fans aren't the only ones who were frustrated. On Saturday afternoon, Indian tennis player Mahesh Bhupathi tweeted: 'Been trying for 6 hours now to buy my wife a ticket to watch me play tomorrow. Still no luck, and the grounds here feel empty. ABSURD!!!'
At Sunday morning's Olympic press briefing, a British reporter brandished a digital photo of empty seats at a men's gymnastics event and asked London Games chair Sebastian Coe to identify the guilty absentees. Mr. Coe replied: 'I'm very happy to look at your holiday snaps later.'
Mr. Coe then expounded by saying that it was early in the Games, that empty seats weren't new to the Olympics and that, in fact, the venues were 'stuffed to the gullets.'
Mr. Coe asserted that empty seats were 'not going to be an issue through these Games' and said organizers were distributing spare tickets to the military, students and teachers. 'Those venues are humming,' he said.
By Sunday evening, the controversy yielded a parody Twitter account called 'the Empty Seat' (@olympicseat), in which the vacant chair laments: 'My grandfather was a seat in the 1948 Olympics. He made it sound so grand. I wanted to follow in his footsteps.'
A spokesman for Locog, as the London Olympics organizing committee is known, said Saturday: 'We are aware that some venues have empty seats this morning. We believe the empty seats are in accredited seating areas, and we are in the process of finding out who should have been in the seats and why they weren't there.'
Locog said it is working to find a way to quickly repurpose unused seats. By Sunday, military members and their families were being offered empty seats at events such as gymnastics.
Locog has a total inventory of about 8.8 million tickets for the Games, but only about 75% of them wind up on sale to the public. About 12% go to national Olympic committees, who then can sell to customers in their countries. About 8% go to sponsors, rights holders and others. The last 5% go to international federations, the International Olympic Committee and sellers of various travel packages.
In the U.K., the public sale process has faced many complaints. The London organizing committee offered Britons a chance to buy Olympic tickets through a complicated multistage lottery and set up a resale program to allow for the authorized resale of unwanted tickets.
The lottery yielded a torrent of complaints when many people complained about being completely shut out. Subsequent ticket releases were plagued by website problems. The resale program has pumped some unused tickets back into circulation, but it is lightly used.
Yet for all the complaints, some tickets are still available for events throughout the Games, especially at the higher price points. On Friday, the Locog website offered tickets to men's gymnastics, beach volleyball and other events. And almost to the last minute, tickets were still available to Friday's opening ceremony, though you would have needed an Olympian wallet to afford the £2,012 ($3,168) and £1,600 ducats that were still around.
一年多以来，许多伦敦市民都曾抱怨奥运会比赛门票一票难求，尤其是游泳和体操等引人入胜的项目。然而上周六，奥运会的第一个全天比赛日的游泳和体操等项目的比赛中，观众席上出现了成片的空座位，显得非常刺眼。
这是怎么回事?要怪就只能怪企业赞助商、国际体育联盟和持权转播商没有使用派发给他们的门票。让空荡荡的景象显得更为凄凉的是，大量媒体因为觉得一些比赛无聊也不在赛场上露面。这是奥运会上很常见的现象，尤其是在没有奖牌产生的比赛中。
于是周六上午在北格林尼治体育馆(North Greenwich Arena)举行的男子体操资格赛上，大片空座醒目地出现在观众席。超级明星菲尔普斯(Michael Phelps)参加预选赛的水上运动中心(Aquatics Center)也是如此。在温布尔登，小威廉姆斯(Serena Williams)参加比赛的中心球场(Centre Court)仍然有几百个空座，这个球场以往大多数时候都是爆满的。
因赛场上的空座感到沮丧的并非只有体育迷们。周六下午，印度网球选手布帕蒂(Mahesh Bhupathi)发推特信息说，为了帮我老婆买一张我明天比赛的门票，我已经试了六个小时了，还是买不到，可观众席看起来却这么空，太扯了!!!
上周日上午举行的奥运会新闻发布会上，英国记者展示了一张男子体操比赛上观众席空空如也的数码照片，要求伦敦奥委会主席科(Sebastian Coe)查出这些缺席者。科回应说，我很乐意待会儿再看你度假时拍的照片。
科随后解释说，现在奥运会刚刚开始，奥运会上出现空座位不是什么新鲜事;事实上，比赛场馆的观众往往都爆满。
科肯定地说，观众席出现空座位的问题不会在奥运会期间一直存在。他说，组织者正在把剩余的票发给军人、学生和教师，那些场馆肯定人满为患。
周日晚间，上述争议招致了推特(Twitter)一名用户的揶揄。这位名为“空位子”的用户写道，我的祖父是1948年伦敦奥运会上的一个座位，他说因为有了他那次奥运会才如此伟大;我也想成为他那样的位子。
伦敦奥组委的一名发言人上周六说，我们意识到今天上午一些场馆出现了空座位，我们认为空座位都位于实名区，我们正在试图查明哪些人没有来以及他们没来的原因。
伦敦奥组委说，它正在努力寻找迅速把没人的座位利用起来的方式。截至上周日，一些军人和军属得到了体操等比赛的空座票。
此次伦敦奥组委共发出880万张门票，但只有大约75%的门票用于公开出售，12%的门票给了各国奥委会，这些奥组委将其卖给本国观众。8%的票给了赞助商、持权转播商等人，剩下的5%给了国际联合会，国际奥委会(International Olympic Committee)以及为旅游团组提供的套餐票。
英国的公开发售程序曾引起很多抱怨。伦敦奥组委为英国人提供了通过复杂、多步摇号程序购买奥运门票的机会，并设立了一个转卖计划，使他们可以合法地转售自己不想要的门票。
摇号招致很多不满，许多人抱怨完全没有机会摇到。后来门票的发售又遭遇了网站故障。转售计划可以让一部分没有用过的门票重新进入流通，但没有多少人利用这个计划。
尽管有这些抱怨，各个项目都还有一些门票可售，特别是票价较高的项目。上周五，男子体操、沙滩排球等赛事的门票在伦敦奥组委的网站上有售。上周五的开幕式门票到几乎最后一分钟都还有卖，不过你必须拥有奥林匹亚众神一样雄厚的财力，才买得起剩余的价格分别为2,012英镑(合3,168美元)和1,600英镑的入场券。
