Organizers of the Rio 2016 Summer Olympic Games say they hope to avoid empty seats that have become problematic at the London 2012 Games. Leonardo Gryner, head of Brazil’s Olympic Committee, said Brazil would have “a better result than London”, but he said that filling all the venues would be a “huge challenge”.
He added, “we have a plan to tackle it by occupying space at the last minute with additional audiences”.
Gryner said Friday at London’s Somerset House, home to the Brazilian contingent during the Games, “it’s a challenge to control the presence of people in the arenas. They buy tickets or they get tickets and sometimes they don’t show up.
“We proposed a program call ‘Full Stadium” with ideas to always keep stadiums full and to create opportunities for the people around the arenas to get inside as soon as we realize that there are empty seats”.
Gryner said some of Rio’s venues may be smaller than their London counterparts so “we don’t build huge places that are hard to fill”.
The team is also monitoring how London’s transport system had coped during the Games and Gryner said they had learned some “beautiful lessons”.
Meanwhile, Rio’s mayor Eduardo Paes said everything was on course for the Games.
He said, “the challenge to both cities (London and Rio) is enormous. Of course Rio de Janeiro has a more ample handful of infrastructure interventions from a sports equipment point of view, perhaps many things already ready, but the city’s infrastructure is surely more ample. But I want to reaffirm that all the projects we agreed on with the International Olympic Committee have already begun”.
Maria Silva Bastos Marques, president of Rio’s Municipal Olympic Company, said Rio has the potential to double its current number of hotel rooms, increasing it by at least 50 per cent.
