Commonwealth Games Delhi 2010: Organizers Face the Challenge to Fill in the Empty Stadiums
New Delhi – The organizers of the Delhi Commonwealth Games, while addressing a press conference here at Delhi, faced severe criticism from the media correspondents upon their ineligibility to attract the spectators to the stadiums to see the live sports
competitions. An interesting point over here is that the situation has not only troubled the Delhi Administration, it has also ringed the bells for Glasgow, who happens to be the host of the next Commonwealth games. According to the reports, not only are the
local spectators at Delhi depicting a low level of interest, the world media too is reporting stagnant ratings of the sports channels airing the event live around the globe.
Earlier, owing to the stories about corruption and mismanagement, when the Delhi Commonwealth Games received severe criticism from the media, the organizers hoped for getting rid over the crises as soon as the games would begin. Though they eventually succeeded
in doing so, however, they couldn’t succeed in prolonging with the positive image portrayed by the remarkable opening ceremony. Later on, the disastrous preparations along with the issues pouring in on daily basis have not only offended the local spectators,
the foreigners too look annoyed with the situation.
According to the reports, the event hasn’t been encouraging right from the first day. As the games were formally started, the swimmers were observed performing in the presence of team mates, officials and friends only, while the rest of the Mukherjee swimming
stadium with the capacity of 5000 spectators remained empty. A somewhat similar situation was observed there at national stadium where the shouts of the hockey players echoed in the empty space. While resenting over the situation, Craig Hunter, chef de mission
of England contingent said that English athletes loved to perform before the huge crowd and for an event as big as Commonwealth Games, it was totally disappointing to not to have that.
The bright, colourful, musical and noisy start of the event has dissipated into a quiet h**l at most of the stadiums. Among all the sports, up till now, thanks to the local players that boxing has succeeded in attracting a decent amount of crowd. Furthermore,
the officials are also expecting the presence of a reasonable number of viewers during the sports competition in which India had a greater probability of winning the gold medal. The much awaited hockey match between India and Pakistan is also expected to create
hype among the local spectators.
During a press conference, the situation turned to be rather comical when the organizing committee chairman Mr. Suresh Kalmadi claimed that the interest of the spectators in the Delhi Commonwealth Games was high and people would turn back to the stadiums
as soon as they would recover from the long opening ceremony held a night before the event. However, Mr. Kalmadi later on accepted that they were considering the students from schools and colleges as a viable option to fill in the stadiums. He further said
that the Delhi administration was also thinking about giving away the tickets for free to the spectators.
Discussing the reasons of the low turn up of the viewers, an official at a ticket box office commented that the basic reason for tickets not getting sold was the absolute poverty of the Indian people. He said that even 100 rupees for a ticket was quite high
for the people of a country as poor as India. Continuing with his point, he further said that the day time scheduling of the sports, much discussed negative publicity focusing corruption matters and tough security clearances were also the reasons to be blamed
for a low turn up of common people at stadiums.
A potential excuse for the foreign viewers not showing up into the sporting events was that a lot of high profile athletes were not competing into the event. The prominent players like Usain Bolt particularly made a negative impact upon diverting the attention
of the international spectators of the Games.
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