It looks like China do not want foreign people coming to Beijing during Olympics. They decided that 75% of all tickets will be sold for Chinese people. There were 2 tickets reserved for Lithuanian fans in decisive basketball games! Now the number increased to 12. It is ridicilous obviously. France got 6 tickets to the women swimming finals where they expect to win gold. Olympics is a worldwide even and although host country should get more tickets but what they do now is nonsence. I though that when the country is chosen to host Olympics they sign a contract where a number of tickets must be agreed. The good thing is that national federations of other countries are putting pressure on China to give more tickets.
I can't say I'm unhappy about this...
A nation spends billions of it's tax payers to make the Olympics work, so why not give them the tickets?
Personally I had to pay 75 Euros for a Football Final ticket in the black market in Athens Olympics in 2004 because all the tickets were 'gone' and they were being sold in the black market by 'visitors', 'tourists' or whatever they want to call themselves... Hey, if you are gonna travel to watch the Olympics, the local population doesn't have to pay for your trip...
PS: Luckily I got a 200 Euros ticket for the Volleyball Final as a present. As for the Basketball Final, you couldn't get in even if you had 1000 Euros to spend on the black market...
So, i'm 100% behind the Chinese government on this one...
i am sure, if fans will be able to go to Pekin (which i presume is not that cheap) from Europe they will find a lot of offers in the streets for the tickets. That's not fair. I hope they will reconsider the quotes.
That's a good point. The atmosphere of the games will suffer most in my opinion. We all know what atmosphere passionate Greek or Lithuanian fans can create. For people that will be going to Beijing expecting to get tickets there it might be a huge disappointment because travel expenses are really high. I believe it will be similar situation to the one in Eurobasket 2007 when it was impossible to buy tickets in advance but we saw the fans in the games.