A preview of a republican win in America. Empty seats.

The rabble up in the nose-bleed seats should have gotten up en masse and "relocated" several hundred rows down toward the courts. Just like we would do after several innings of seeing the empty box seats at baseball games when I was younger.

Would have been a nice combination of putting to good use the best seats in the house and a subtle protest against the corporatocracy. If those empty seats were truly mostly for athlete's families then I'm sure they would have loved to have seen true fans of competition get closer to it if they were unable to attend.

The corporatists and Wall Street boyz would, on the other hand, be traumatized for life that someone other than themselves could cheat or game the system for their own benefit.

Airlines have discount "standby seating" to ensure a full flight. TV show tapings also often must fill vacant seats at the last minute and have no shortage of people willing to wait in line for the chance to see Jay Leno. I was at the Jay Leno show once and they had people see part of the show and then swap with someone else who was waiting. The Olympics ought to institute a seat forfeit policy for no-shows and give the seats to those that really want them. IMO, someone who goes to a party and stays out too late is not of the true Olympic athletic mindset anyway. Just stay in your expensive hotel room and watch it on TV while you nurse your hangover.

Sorry, but these Brits have not organized these games well at all from the lack of needed security to the ticket fiasco.

Remember, they asked the manager of The Who if Keith Moon would be available to perform during the opening ceremonies !!! The man has been dead for years!!!

All quite ridiculous to say the least.

Yesterday we learned that people were upset that Romney, when asked, pointed out some deficiencies in the Olympics plannng. Everyone made fun of him. Today we read this, and the Olympics are just beginning.

Soon Romney will begin paring down the waste and inefficiency of the bloated federal bureaucracy and MSNBC will condemn him again - since it is adversely affecting the loafers that feed off the taxpayer while voting Democratic. And again we will see the economy be back to where America expects it to be - number one in the world. Deadbeats will scream even louder than they are in these posts but real Americans will once again be allowed to share in the dream that this country has always offered until January 2007 when the Democrats took control. How has your life been changed since January 2007?

The peoblem is tieckets are just too expensive and even unavailable.

I agree with a comment I read earlier - those tickets were given to insiders. They wouldn't be caught dead sitting with the peasants.

It is early. Wait for the real events to begin and see what happens to the seats.

It was the bottle service, for these expensive seats. They were only serving Carlo Rossi wine!

The same thing happened in the Seoul Olympics...Anyhow..the big sellers are the "finals"...prelims and semis don't get the draw that the finals do...

Anyhow...another problem is pricing. If you want to fill seats...sell cheap tickets and make them available at the gate. Selling 100 seats sold at 12 Euros is more profitable than 10 seats at 100 Euros...

One of the biggest problems is that tickets for sporting events are way too overpriced...and not just for the Olympics...
I think I've gone to two or three sporting events in the last decade because of this price gouging...
And the only reason I went to those is because my nephew was playing...

Can't wait for the NFL and college football. Geez!

The supply and demand theory and the free market should have filled the place to the brim attractive venues and all.

The free market apparently does not exist by self.

Having ample supply apparently does not increase demand.

When "according to theory" these three commonly touted natural, pure and unadulterated benefits of capitalism are somehow voided, then some other force must be in play.

What could these be except the misworkings of the gigantic machine that takes billions from sponsors who then "deduct these expenses" from profits that might be subject to taxation for the sufferance of general benefits?

When a corporation becomes larger and more powerful than democratically elected governments then the concentration of anomalous power is easily suspected. A corporation is not democratic, just as some governments are not democratic and therefore are quite likely to be the root cause of the miss allocation of resources.

Reserving seats, for the privileged, who have paid, but who cannot lower themselves to indicate that they are not attending, suggest that more than faulty reservation system is in conflict. But more productive thoughts suggest that the capitalist system does not have a clue to the fact that empty seats are the same as unemployed workers, worker are not seen as supplying demand but as a capital expense to be reduced.

Nothing amazing about that since us has been discussed for 200 years, but what is amazing is that the resource exploitive ingenuity to produce products to such extravagance levels, does not indicate anything at all (capitalism shrugs). Really, well not quite, but who has pointed out that those things happened not because of some ingenious economic system, capitalism, but happened because the resources used by man's inventions just happen to lay all about, coal here, oil there, minerals and whole continents unknown in ancient times? Just as society was ill prepared for penicillin and green revolutions, it does not seem to know the limits of the ground it walk on, of the value of the trodden earth beneath its rumbling powers.

You could venture unproductively to suggest that the Olympics has become the monster machine of media, advertisement capitalism taking in possible form purchasable, leaving the athletes to near human sacrifice, youth to ground up as meat to entertain the insatiable appetite of those grown accustom to always having seat to the table and having it served even in their absence.

Olympics including every possible paid for delusion has grown since allowing corporation to buy it, it was foreseeable then, to see the display of youth and sacrifice be surrendered to the "try anything" format seen in this 2012 effort. But under the justification, we see a public works program forced into great world cities, which having lost leadership and verve cannot produce the same results without it being corporate sponsored. It is of value, but at a price that is unquestionably larger that, more sensible public works effort.

After 5 days and 500 dollars in time I am still trying to see Opening Ceremonies, in more than a 3 minute advertised edited clip on blacked screen (turn off hardware the acceleration), after having spent the my allocated time I will not see any of the athletes efforts in this Olympics or the next one.

I have sacrificed responding to advertisements and along with them the best effort of human athletes, just point out that without new ways of thinking the seats will be empty, and the economic system will always be floundering about, spending resources without proper effect.

Mit said we will just have to wait and see. I guess we are seeing.

They have screwed this up from the beginning, private security company hired couldn't provide promised numbers, so military was brought in. Now they bring in military to fill vacant seats, sad opening show, Queen basically snoozing, some of the ugliest outfits ever. Its only day three maybe there is still hope to save face. How about inviting the commoners you have essentially sealed off due to crazy prices.

Sports are not sports any more, at least not in the countries that live and breath profit.

Obviously, we can't pull the plug on Olympics since all excellent athletes dream of participating but we need to somehow recapture a more pleasant human mood, when performances spoke to the hearts of competitors and spectators, without the screaming national fervor of rowdy supporters fracturing any hope of sportsman-like unity.

I preferred amateur contestants who achieved individual skills by determination, not eased by corporate sponsorship. I preferred it when winners were associated with their name rather than their flag. I preferred it when medals were hung around the necks of new winners by former, famous victors, not by soft weak royals or no-name event organisers who couldn't hurdle a cat, run to the mailbox or swim a width.

I preferred to see people excitedly freely milling about the venues, not herded by menacing guards. I preferred it when penniless orphans were gently steered to prime seats, when the focus was entirely on the athletes not on the extravagant posturing of the host nation. I'd rather hear a little-known team, like Ethiopian women for example, if there is such a group, singing their club song rather than billionaire rock stars playing decade old stale hits.

Now, I guess I'd rather sit by a river and watch the fish. I've been secretly hoping the Brits would balls up their Guantanamo-style horror show to shock-start wiser Olympic celebrations and reform the event.

Pride comes before a fall but after the fall might come a little common sense.

They'll need to send a few soldiers to my house to fill up the chairs in my house if NBC keeps on like this. They utterly butchered the opening ceremony -- I put up with Meredith and Matt bleating continuously for a while, plus the endless commercials, but switched off when they cut away from [apparently, the most moving] part of the ceremony for a meaningless interview with Phelps, so I missed the good stuff at the end. I read newspapers on the net from other countries including the UK and 100% of them are trashing NBC.

The actual sports have now begun, and NBC are doing what they do best, finding commentators who talk continuously without breath. It's a bit like "sports commentary for blind people". The woman calling the US womens soccer game clearly had no idea what she was talking about. I watched a swimming heat this morning featuring Missy and the woman commentator bleated on about technique for the entire minute --what happened to the old days when we were just told who was leading? I then watched womens archery and some clown said something about the athletes needing to have a state of excitement, a rather curious statement given that all the archers were obviously focusing on keeping dead calm.

I think I'll just abandon this and wait for the highlights DVD for christmas.

All those empty seats is B S

Hey, Romney was right. He said those Brits couldn't do it right.

VOTE ROMNEY 2012! VOTE FOR LEADERSHIP!!

The stinking media ready to apologise to Romney yet? Are there ANY Americans out here, who don't realise that the press is in the tank for ALL leftists?

I love it. Hey ever think they scared people so much they don't want to go. Missiles on roof tops and crotch scanning technology known as TSA perverts/criminals. Hey elitist's F U.

But the first day saw rows of empty seats at events including swimming, dressage,

Don't worry, Romney will outsource those seats and fill them for 1/10th the price of what Great Britain could have done it for.

The most stupid mistake that has happen in the last 4 years was to let London, England host the Olympics. This country doesn't even have the ability to defend its own citizens now we have citizens from all over the world risking their lives. Living under the dictatorship of the queen and her military has to be bad enough. You would think someone with some intellegence would see that these disaster don't happen in the future. The queen woun't even allow her own subjects to attend the games.

The massive deployment of soldiers armed with maching guns around London, supported by armor vehicles and helicopter gunships have destroy the spirit of the Olympic and replaced it with fear of terrorism and death. Rational people just stayed away.

Contrary to the sport propaganda, the Olympic is a big business venture with big investors. Millions of British Pound are at stake. After the London fiasco, the Olympic will be insolvent or nearly so, thanks to the anti-terrorism fear mongers, security freaks, and the police state.

those rows and rows of empty sits really look bad, just let people get in and charge them some bucks, what's the big deal.

At least let the people who are there move up! Or, are they too low class for their bums to touch the good seats? Sounds like a British thing to me.