Sport

Rio Paralympics organisers alarmed as only 12 per cent of tickets sold

Upcoming Games in Rio ‘precarious’ after poor ticket sales revealed

A Turkish flag is seen between empty seats during the Women’s quarter-final basketball game between Spain and Turkey this week. Photograph: EPA
A Turkish flag is seen between empty seats during the Women’s quarter-final basketball game between Spain and Turkey this week. Photograph: EPA
Thu Aug 18 2016 - 01:26

Next month’s Rio Paralympics look set to be watched by crowds more usually associated with non-league football after the organisers revealed that only 12 per cent of the tickets have been sold.

The International Paralympic Committee (IPC) had been hoping to build on the huge success of London 2012 but there are now major fears the Rio Games could set the movement back.

Rio 2016’s organising committee is already nearly three weeks late in paying travel grants to the participating nations and has been in crisis talks with the IPC, Rio mayor Eduardo Paes and the Brazilian government all week to find a solution to its budget shortfall.

Earlier this week, IPC president Sir Philip Craven described the situation as “precarious”, while British Paralympic Association chief executive Tim Hollingsworth said there were “obviously serious challenges”.

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It has been widely reported in the local media that the organising committee has diverted much of the Paralympic budget towards the Olympics, as problems with basic infrastructure, security and transport have mounted.

Paes has promised an additional €42 million for the Paralympics, which start on September 7th, but a court injunction has held that up until Rio 2016 opens its accounts for public scrutiny.

Legal action

Rio 2016 spokesman Mario Andrada has repeatedly refused this week to comment on the Paralympic budget, saying legal action to overturn the injunction prevented him from doing so, but he has denied that the Games are in danger.

“We want to stage a very successful Paralympics, one that is up to the standard of the Olympics, and we met our sponsors and broadcasters yesterday to confirm this,” said Andrada on Wednesday.

He added that the organising committee had experienced poor initial sales for the Olympics, too, and he expected growing local interest in the Olympics to boost Paralympic sales “as we have seen with other hosts before”.

In regard to the travel grants, which many poorer nations depend on to send athletes to a Games, Andrada said there was still “plenty of time to make sure they get paid and athletes can get here and prepare to compete”.

Poor ticket sales

The poor ticket sales figures, however, will alarm everybody associated with the Paralympics as the experience of the Rio Olympics would suggest only about half of those who have bought tickets, be they sponsors or the general public, actually attend.

Television viewers around the world have seen swathes of empty plastic seats at Olympic venues, with many sessions for the smaller sports barely a quarter full.

But even marquee sports such as athletics have struggled to bring fans in, with tickets available for the opening ceremony, Usain Bolt’s 100 metres final and the beach volleyball’s medal rounds on Copacabana’s famous seafront.

According to Andrada, there were nearly 54,000 tickets sold for Tuesday night’s session at the Olympic Stadium – a figure in line with the much-quoted 88 per cent of all tickets for the Games now sold – but there were barely 20,000 people actually there.

Meanwhile, the IPC announced it has suspended Russian shot-putter Aleksei Lesnykh for four years after he failed a drugs test at the IPC Athletics Grand Prix in Dubai in March.

This decision will bring fresh embarrassment for the Russian Paralympic Committee as it waits for its appeal to be heard against its blanket ban from the Rio Games for systemic doping. A decision in that case is expected next Monday.