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Delhi Games : Free Tickets To Fill Empty Seats
11:03am Tuesday October 05, 2010
Richard Williams
Free tickets to the Commonwealth Games could be given to school children and the underprivileged in a bid to combat near-empty stadiums.
Bosses blamed a problem with a lack of ticket booths for near-empty venues
President of the games, Mike Fennell has admitted his concern at the lack of crowds, with vast swathes of vacant seats for swimming, gymnastics, badminton and hockey events. But Delhi 2010 organising committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi insisted attendance would pick up, blaming problems so far on ticket booths not being set up outside venues. And he said measures were being planned to address the embarassing absence of spectators. "We are working on the children from schools," he said.
We are working with the organisers on this on how these venues can be filled
<cite> Delhi 2010 organising committee chairman Suresh Kalmadi </cite>
"Already steps are being taken in that direction. And also from the low level of society." "It is causing us some concern. Yesterday it was quite clear that a number of venues did not have a lot of spectators. "We are working with the organisers on this on how these venues can be filled." He added that the problems over the ticket booths had been resolved. For the second morning of heats at the swimming venue, the Dr SP Mukherjee Aquatic Complex, which seats 5,178, was about one fifth full.
The majority of those present were team members, officials and volunteers. And less than a tenth of the 2,500-capacity Indira Gandhi Sports Complex velodrome was occupied when the first rider in cycling's individual pursuit qualifying, India's Dayala Ram Saran, took to the track. The majority of those in attendance were armed with the flags of England, Scotland, Wales, Australia and New Zealand. Hockey, table tennis and netball have also attracted similarly sparse crowds.
Save The Children spokeswoman Kathryn Rawe pointed to the fact that the £6bn budget for the games was four times that of the main programme to address child malnutrition in India. "It's a positive step, in that children may feel more part of it," she told Sky News Online. "But there are massive numbers of children still dying below the age of five in India and that is clearly a more serious concern."
