Just the ticket for the Olympic Games
Would you shell out 40 euros or more for a back-row seat at a preliminary round of judo competition featuring 22-year-old athletes from obscure countries, whose names you have never heard of and may never again? That, or some variant thereof, could be one of the acid tests in rating the success of the 2004 Olympics. One of the endless interesting things about the Olympics is that, for all their renown as the pre-eminent showcase of international sport, few of the offerings on the 17-day bill (featuring some 630 «ticketed sessions») are genuine spectator sports, and fewer still rate as commercially prominent. Needless to say, judo is not among them, nor is its cousin tae kwon do, even if a Greek came seemingly out of nowhere at Sydney and took a gold medal in the sport and which, for that reason alone, may draw hundreds of curious onlookers and extended family members expecting a repeat performance. Most Olympic sports could still be labeled «minor,» even by those who habitually follow sports. The list is long: sailing, archery (even if the actress Geena Davis’s attempt to make the US Olympic team last time added a note of curiosity), shooting, rhythmic gymnastics, kayak slalom, beach volleyball, baseball (at least outside the Americas and Japan), softball, fencing, hockey, water polo, rowing – hopefully, you get the point. While there is still much about the Olympics that smacks of elitism, of catering to the arbiters of sport rather than the hoi polloi, ticketing is a crucial link between the business/organizational side of the Games and the mass public whose support is critical. A huge effort will be needed to get the locals to savor the full run of Olympic offerings, not just as a way to increase their sporting knowledge but to make sure the Games aren’t top-heavy and bottom-light – and to sell well over 5 million total tickets. Popularity for the few Of the 28 sports on offer, only a handful can be considered guaranteed to attract sell-out crowds on the basis of glamour or popularity. For all the commercialism of the age, the Olympics (thankfully) may never entirely get past their amateur origins, and they effectively serve as world championships for numerous sports with admittedly limited appeal. Athletics – track and field – is of course the premiere Olympics sport, and a strong case could be made that gymnastics and swimming would take the other two places on the podium. Yet even athletics is hardly a money-spinner of a sport (London recently pulled out as host-designate for the 2005 World Athletics Championships) and has tried various gimmicks to attract interest in recent years, while its participants, except at meets, labor well out of the public eye. This is even more true for gymnasts and swimmers, though both will draw much of the first-week crowd. Cycling can also be counted on, partly because it needs a large arena with lots of seats; it also happens to be fast and exciting. Perhaps the only true world sport on tap is soccer, which most of the world knows as football, and even there Olympics teams are cobbled together temporarily on a national basis, as in the World Cup, which is not the usual configuration for a mainly club-based sport. Tennis is another world game, but its appeal remains limited, not just in Greece but by the fact that its Olympics appearance is both recent (from 1988) and crammed into an already overcrowded tour schedule. Given the choice between winning Wimbledon and winning an Olympic gold, few players would hesitate before choosing the former. Basketball is the other quasi-mass sport, and in hoops-mad Greece it will also draw crowds, especially whenever the NBA-sourced US Dream Team takes the court. And spare weightlifting tickets at the smallish new venue at Nikaia, in this country of Pyrros Dimas and Kakhi Kakiashvili (both naturalized rather than born here, but never mind that), will be about as common as icebergs in the Aegean – in August. As for the rest As usual, the challenge lies not in the easy things but in the hard ones. Filling the stands for these popular events should be relatively easy, but nothing is guaranteed. Unfortunate memories persist from the 1997 World Athletics Championships, when empty stands were eventually filled thanks to ticket giveaways and promotions, although any fears that that embarrassing scenario will be repeated in 2004 are probably groundless. Filling them for the more obscure sports will be 10 times the challenge, regardless of the fact that these will be the Olympics. General popularity is not the only criteria by which people might choose what to see. Other factors will come into play, and these psychological elements merit a close look before final ticketing decisions are made. Some people will watch sports they have some personal interest in; table tennis, for example, or archery, which will be held in the old Kallimarmaro Stadium. Others will have an aesthetic appeal, such as show-jumping (that’s with horses), badminton, or fencing. Still others can boast gladiator-like appeal, with well-bulked individuals squaring off against each other or against the elements; wrestling, boxing, and triathlon fit in that category, and the surprisingly strong appeal of the triathletes at Sydney, where the event appeared for the first time as an Olympic sport, shows that newness is not necessarily a kiss of death in terms of appeal, even for a heavily tradition-bound movement like the Olympics. Curiosity for the new can be a major motivator, not least for enterprising Greeks. But will mountain biking races attract a family of four? In short, many factors on the demand side help determine buyer choice. As for the other, the supply side, this is simpler, and is dominated by two main factors: the availability of tickets, and their price. The former, in theory, will be democratic. Athens 2004 insists there will be no free tickets – a refreshing (and refreshingly direct) bit of directive. They will be sold publicly in all countries at the same time, including Greece, starting in spring 2003, although «contractual client groups» will apparently have first choice, starting this summer. Ticket sales are supposed to cover a substantial proportion of the Games’ budget (up to 180 million euros). Yet pricing, the other key element, involves a careful balancing act between revenue needs and the imperative of catering to the broader public, who won’t particularly want to be ripped off and who will anyway be footing the bill for the Games for years to come. Tickets therefore must be priced reasonably, partly because Greece is not a rich country, but working out the diversity in potential demand between (for example) the marathon finish and the judo preliminaries, as well as within the same sessions (good vs mediocre seats), will be crucial to whether the stands get filled for the less popular disciplines. With the Games to enjoy blanket television coverage, it will take some hard thinking to ensure that the greatest sports festival in the world, an extravaganza in every sense of the term, doesn’t turn the host country into a nation of spending-averse couch potatoes when the time comes.
