A Beijing Olympics official said on Tuesday that scalping is prohibited by the Chinese law and the organizing committee of the Beijing Olympic Games has adopted a series of measures to fight scalping.
Wang Wei, vice executive president and secretary general of the Beijing Organizing Committee of the 29th Olympic Games (BOCOG), said at a press conference that to fight scalping, the BOCOG has adopted many measures, including the real name policy for buying tickets of the opening and closing ceremonies.
"And for competition events, we have quotas for each person who buy tickets," Wang said.
"Scalping is prohibited by the Chinese law. Since the test events, we have implemented fixed measures to prevent scalping, and have deployed more people to implement our anti-scalping measures," Wang made the remarks when being asked if there were scalping accidents during the Olympic Games.
Wang also briefed journalists on the attendance rate in venues, saying that on Aug. 11, there were 20 competition events at 18 venues. Two of the 18 venues in Beijing had an attendance rate of over 90 percent, six over 80 percent and eight over 70 percent, while the remaining two over 60 percent.
Being asked why there were still some empty seats on the stands since the organizing committee claimed that all the tickets had been sold out, Wang gave several reasons.
The not-too-full stadium is partially due to the rainy, humid and hot weather in previous days. And there were always not many spectators showing up in preliminaries, according to the experience of the previous Olympic Games. As time goes on, "we will get more spectators in the stadium," Wang said.
"The tickets are all sold out, that is right," Wang reiterated.
"We do have some reserved seats for the Olympic families. For the preliminaries, some people might not show up, and that is understandable. And for competitions like beach volleyball and basketball, we have one ticket for the whole morning, whole afternoon or whole evening, but spectators might only choose one of several matches of the time period to watch," Wang further explained.
Being asked if the organizing committee employed cheerleaders at venues to fill the empty seats, Wang said, "The responsibility rests with the local authorities and venue managers. If they find that there are too many empty seats, they will organize some cheerleaders who are volunteers."
If spectators come for the seats, the chearleaders will stand up and leave, letting the ticket holders have their seats, said Wang.
(Xinhua News Agency August 12, 2008)