I haven’t much cared for the Olympics since they allowed professional athletes.

I don’t bother with the Olympics either.

I happened to read this article later in the day From the BBC It was interesting conversation on the problem of empty seats at the Olympic venues. The comments in particular from Londoners on the ground are worth the read.

I guess you have to see the BBC News Facebook group to see the comments.

#3 Archer - you are right.  The ticket-selling has been a nightmare, with still quite a wodge of sponsor, in house and allocated seating to overseas Olympic bodies left empty or tickets returned at the last moment.  Then there are those seats supposedly available to the general public.  It was not possible to buy a ticket to say, watch the shooting or the dressage.  Much too simple.  Instead you had to put in a request for an allocation in a ballot of say four tickets and specify a number of different preferences of sports you would like to watch.  Then you might or might not get any seats, or not the number you wanted and end up with watching something which was not your first choice.

We are seeing the results of this Byzantine arrangement coming home to roost and not just occassional seats empty, but whole banks of them indeed huge areas of them.  Meanwhile, Joe Public who was quite happy to pay for one ticket to watch the minor sport he participates in on a day off work when there is no way with the level of interest in that sport that it would have been sold out, feeling excluded and unable to work his way through the nightmare system.

All these Joe Publics, including myself are now feeling disenfranchised and fed up with it all, and there is a groundswell of anger growing.  And we will make do, unless a sponsor will send a ticket our way, to just watch it on the box where the viewing is superb, whether you are in London or Ulan Bator - and without the need to eat cardboard burgers or guzzle sugar-water.

We just hope that Lord Coe does not go into politics and get put in charge of anything else.

Were there any U.S. teams this year, or were all the entrants catalog models from Ralph Lauren?

Well, first of all, I agree with this statement:

Let’s not get too high and mighty about Olympic ideals. From ancient times, the Games have been about good entertainment, which costs money and resources.

We have all kinds of international and national sporting championships which are first and foremost for the people involved in the sport and for people who love and follow the sport.  The Olympics are for people who like to sit on their sofa and be entertained with amazing athletic performances in sports that the typical viewer doesn’t pay the slightest attention to in the intervening four years.  (And this includes the big-draw sports like gymnastics or track and field.)

In THAT spirit, I think these Olympics are going swimmingly.  NBC has this great thing at nbcolympics.com that, if you are a cable TV subscriber and sign in with your cable TV ID and password, you can watch every single one of the events live, and most of the taped events on-demand.  I was watching synchronized men’s platform diving today.  It was astonishingly spectacular.  It was held at the Olympic aquatic center (swimming pool at one end, diving well at the other) and there were people sitting at the extreme far end watching.  The divers had to be at LEAST 200 feet from these people.  In order for them to see better, there were big TV screens set up in the arena.  Now, these folks had to pay for tickets, take off work or whatever else they were doing, get into the arena, and then sit there and watch on TV screens what a bunch of ants at the end of the arena were doing.  Meanwhile *I*, in my own good time, for free, could hook up my laptop to my TV via HDMI cable, sit in a comfy chair, munch snacks, and watch a beautiful high definition performance, complete with commentary, right in front of me (that I could pause if the phone rang).  Personally, I think I was getting a heck of a lot more for my entertainment dollar than the folks who bought tickets to the event.  My kids are divers and when they came home this afternoon, we watched it all over again.  Good deal.

Hardly “for free,” CM. You pay monthly cable TV fees for mostly rubbish at all other times year after year. They owe you, IMO.

I pulled the plug about two years ago, going with just free antenna stations and my $8 per month Netflix subscription. This is the only time I wish i had pay TV but that feeling will pass within a few weeks. NBC is torturing us free-watchers with regular and beach volleyball every single day. Volleyball is crazy-boring so I think they did it on purpose.

Well, actually I pay for my mom’s cable TV but I myself only use antenna.  Since my mom doesn’t have the computer savvy to pick up the live feeds (although she does use the internet) and since I pay the bill, I thought it was not unethical to use her sign-on.

She comes to my house every Sunday and this Sunday we tuned into NBC TV to watch the Olympics.  After three hours of beach volleyball (what????) I decided to make the effort to figure out how to get the stuff via internet and I then hooked up my laptop to the TV.  My mom then spent the rest of the day watching equestrian events, diving, and other interesting sports with narry a volleyball in sight.

Oh, well done, CM! My laptop is old and I can’t connect it to the TV. If I could, I’d log on to BBC and do the same. I do have a mini-HDMI cable for my tablet and it streams beautifully. Unfortunately BBC Mobile can’t provide that service if you’re not in the UK. :(

I wonder if the volleyball players know it’s our punishment and how loathed their sport is by many of us, hahahaha?