Rio 2016 events kick-off with football, but in near empty stadiums

Описание: 텅빈 경기장에 시작한 리우 올림픽
Staying in Rio,... and the official opening may not have happened yet,... but some events have already started.
Something that stood out like a sore thumb this week was the sheer number empty seats at the first round of the women's football matches.
The solution? Bussing in tens of thousands of schoolchildren
Barry Welsh reports.
The Rio Olympics have already seen its first wins and its first losses, after the women's football began on Wednesday.
The home nation team saw its Brazilian stars record a comfortable three-nil win over China, while reigning champions, USA saw off New Zealand, two-nil.

The Korean team will be facing Fiji, one of the lowest ranked footballing nations in the world, and they will be hoping for a big win, to give them a boost in a tough group with Germany and Mexico.

They will also be hoping for a better audience atmosphere than in some of the women's games.
The opening match between Sweden and South Africa, was an underwhelming affair, with attendance of just a few hundred in a 60-thousand seater stadium.

Ticket sales seems to have been a problem in general, with over a million tickets still unsold.
The Rio 2016 organizers have said they will launch a new project giving away almost a quarter of a million tickets to school children.
They've said this would be not a problem because they have reached the 300-hundred dollar revenue target they had set, and that they will now try to fill the stands in less popular events, such as golf, rugby sevens, and hockey.
Football was not mentioned.

The opening ceremony on Friday at least is expecting a full house and organizers are promising a spectacular show, even with a budget that was slashed by half, due to Brazil's economic difficulties.


But the fireworks do not seem to have been cut, with those in Rio treated to a special preview as the stadium's firework display was given a test run.

Barry Welsh, Arirang News.

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