Dusting off Beijing's Olympic venues
Tuesday, 13th October 2009 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
It's rare that venues built for the 2008 Beijing Olympics actually host events—but in the past week, three of these white elephants were actually in use. The China Open tennis tournament came to the Olympic Green Tennis Center from October 2-11; the Bird's Nest played host to a Zhang Yimou production of the Italian opera Turandot on Oct. 6 and 7; and the NBA brought a preseason game to Wukesong Basketball Arena—a facility that the league designed and now operates.Here's a quick look at each of the events:
Wukesong Arena, October 11, 2009
NBA Games at Wukesong Basketball Arena
The Denver Nuggets played the Indiana Pacers in the second NBA preseason game played here. As expected, the NBA put on a good show—Carmelo Anthony poured in 45 points; breakdancers, cheerleaders and mascots kept the crowd in their seats during breaks; and hoops activities (sponsored, of course) and a small NBA retail outlet continued the action in the arena's outer ring.
Wukesong is decades ahead of any arena used by the Chinese Basketball Association—the seats are comfortable, the jumbotron is jumbo, it actually has built in concession stands, and I doubt that "benchwarmer" will be a literal term here in the winter.
A common sight outside Beijing sports venues, scalpers were hard at work.
Its 18,000 seats were nearly all taken Sunday, but the event still seemed to suffer from some of the ticketing woes faced by other sporting events in China. In a country full of NBA fans, and a city of 17.4 million people, there should be no empty seats for the only NBA game that will happen here this year. Face values on tickets being sold on the street right before the game ranged from 600 to 2,800 yuan, but scalpers offered steep discounts. Asking prices (before any haggling) for those two ticket prices were 200 and 1,000 yuan.
I'll save an examination of the problem with getting butts in seats in China for another post, but it's safe to say that any money that the NBA is making in China does not come from ticket sales. But they do entertainment with a flair and on a scale rarely seen in China, and an event like this is primarily for branding and sponsor exposure.
On another note, what was Mike Dunleavy Jr. thinking? Does Beijing have a secret Silk Market for Blind People where he had this suit made?
China Open at Olympic Tennis Center
The China Open came to Beijing for the sixth year in a row (its history reaches back to 1993, and includes events in Shanghai). Being on the post-season Asia circuit keeps it pretty low-profile, but big purses for both the men and the women this year attracted some big names. Novak Djokovic and Svetlana Kuznetsova cruising to the men's and women's titles. Djokovic took home $500,000 for his win, and Kuznetsova $775,500. The event lacked marquee matchups in its late stages, a common problem at the Asian tournaments where the biggest stars tend to lack motivation.
Taking advantage of some of that laziness was Zhang Shuai, who beat world No. 1 Dinara Safina in the second round before losing to Marion Bartoli. Overall, China's women had a strong showing, with the best performance coming from Peng Shuai and Taiwan's Su-Wei Hseih, who took the women's doubles crown.
In singles, Peng Shuai beat Jelena Jankovic and Maria Sharapova to make it to the quarterfinals, where she lost to Nadia Petrova. Li Na went out in the third round to Elena Dementieva, and Zheng Jie lost to eventual champ Kuznetsova in the first round. Full results are available at ChinaOpen.com.
As noted in this earlier post on the event, the matches were pretty poorly attended but the 30-yuan grounds tickets attracted crowds that enjoyed concessions and interactive entertainment provided by the sponsors. The tournament was heavily promoted through ads on CCTV-5 (China's sports channel) and in various sports publications, as well as billboards all over Beijing. Despite this, and the fact that it kicked off on a holiday weekend with great weather, Beijingers stayed away in droves.
Curiously, event organizers seem to think that a brand new stadium will somehow spike attendance. "The existing facilities cannot meet the needs of a commercial event," said China Open senior organizer Zhang Yabin, according to a recent piece in the Washington Post (New court shows ambitions of revamped China Open). The piece quotes another event organizer as saying that sponsorship (from the likes of Mercedes, Kappa and Sony Ericcson) accounted for 70 percent of revenue, whereas 50 or 60 percent would be a healthier target.
Turandot at the Bird's Nest
The most expensive and most celebrated of all of the Olympic venue constructions, the Bird's Nest is also the games' most embarrassingly dormant showpiece. Talk of bringing Chinese Soccer League games there broke down because, well, the league is famously mediocre. "We don't want to put any shame on the Bird's Nest," said Luo Ning, vice president of the company that owns Beijing Guo'an of the CSL, according to this translation in a Reuters story.
Since the closing ceremony of the 2008 Olympics, the Bird's Nest has hosted a Jackie Chan and Friends concert last May (apparently, shame was not an issue anymore), and the Italian Super Cup Final, a soccer match between Inter Milan and Lazio on the one-year anniversary of the 2008 opening ceremony.
The latest event to hit this 91,000-seat stadium was a production of the Italian opera Turandot, directed by Zhang Yimou, who was also responsible for the opening ceremony. Blogging for The Beijinger, Anthony Tao sounded pretty underwhelmed (Turandot Turn-off). Opera, it seems, is not best enjoyed in a stadium with a red Olympic track between the audience and the stage.
Tags: Bird's Nest, China Open, Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, NBA, tennis, Wukesong
Nuggets, Pacers to play in Taipei
Wednesday, 24th June 2009 ~ Maggie ~ Link ~ Comments (0)
NBA China CEO Tim Chen (far right) with Taipei mayor Hua Lung-bin (left) and sports affairs council minister Tai Hsia-ling (center)
The game will be played at the 12,874-seat Taipei Arena. Tickets go on sale at noon on June 25, and can be ordered online at AllGenki.net. The NBA sent the Milwaukee Bucks and Golden State Warriors to play in Guangzhou and Beijing around the same time last year.
Related:
Bucks and Warriors to play in China in 2008
Tags: basketball, Denver Nuggets, Golden State Warriors, Indiana Pacers, Milwaukee Bucks, NBA, Taipei, Taipei Arena, Taiwan, Tim Chen