For more than a year, many Londoners have complained about their inability to obtain Olympic tickets, especially for marquee events like swimming and gymnastics. Then on Saturday, the first full day of competition here revealed unsightly swaths of empty seats at marquee events like swimming and gymnastics.

　　How did that happen? Blame a mix of prime tickets that go unused by corporate sponsors, international sports federations and rights holders. Adding to the unfortunate visuals: Bored media stayed away in droves for preliminary competitions in some sports. This is a common Olympics phenomenon, especially early in the Games when medals aren't yet on the line.

　　As a result, patches of empty seats were visible Saturday morning at North Greenwich Arena, where men's gymnastics qualifying was under way. The same was true at the Aquatics Center, where superstar Michael Phelps swam in preliminary heats. At Wimbledon, Serena Williams played at a mostly crowded Centre Court stadium that was nonetheless blotched with sections of a couple of hundred empty seats each.

　　Fans aren't the only ones who were frustrated. On Saturday afternoon, Indian tennis player Mahesh Bhupathi tweeted: 'Been trying for 6 hours now to buy my wife a ticket to watch me play tomorrow. Still no luck, and the grounds here feel empty. ABSURD!!!'

　　At Sunday morning's Olympic press briefing, a British reporter brandished a digital photo of empty seats at a men's gymnastics event and asked London Games chair Sebastian Coe to identify the guilty absentees. Mr. Coe replied: 'I'm very happy to look at your holiday snaps later.'

　　Mr. Coe then expounded by saying that it was early in the Games, that empty seats weren't new to the Olympics and that, in fact, the venues were 'stuffed to the gullets.'

　　Mr. Coe asserted that empty seats were 'not going to be an issue through these Games' and said organizers were distributing spare tickets to the military, students and teachers. 'Those venues are humming,' he said.

　　By Sunday evening, the controversy yielded a parody Twitter account called 'the Empty Seat' (@olympicseat), in which the vacant chair laments: 'My grandfather was a seat in the 1948 Olympics. He made it sound so grand. I wanted to follow in his footsteps.'

　　A spokesman for Locog, as the London Olympics organizing committee is known, said Saturday: 'We are aware that some venues have empty seats this morning. We believe the empty seats are in accredited seating areas, and we are in the process of finding out who should have been in the seats and why they weren't there.'

　　Locog said it is working to find a way to quickly repurpose unused seats. By Sunday, military members and their families were being offered empty seats at events such as gymnastics.

　　Locog has a total inventory of about 8.8 million tickets for the Games, but only about 75% of them wind up on sale to the public. About 12% go to national Olympic committees, who then can sell to customers in their countries. About 8% go to sponsors, rights holders and others. The last 5% go to international federations, the International Olympic Committee and sellers of various travel packages.

　　In the U.K., the public sale process has faced many complaints. The London organizing committee offered Britons a chance to buy Olympic tickets through a complicated multistage lottery and set up a resale program to allow for the authorized resale of unwanted tickets.

　　The lottery yielded a torrent of complaints when many people complained about being completely shut out. Subsequent ticket releases were plagued by website problems. The resale program has pumped some unused tickets back into circulation, but it is lightly used.

　　Yet for all the complaints, some tickets are still available for events throughout the Games, especially at the higher price points. On Friday, the Locog website offered tickets to men's gymnastics, beach volleyball and other events. And almost to the last minute, tickets were still available to Friday's opening ceremony, though you would have needed an Olympian wallet to afford the £2,012 ($3,168) and £1,600 ducats that were still around.

　　一年多以來，許多倫敦市民都曾抱怨奧運會比賽門票一票難求，尤其是游泳和體操等引人入勝的項目。然而上周六，奧運會的第一個全天比賽日的游泳和體操等項目的比賽中，觀眾席上出現(xiàn)了成片的空座位，顯得非常刺眼。

　　這是怎么回事?要怪就只能怪企業(yè)贊助商、國際體育聯(lián)盟和持權(quán)轉(zhuǎn)播商沒有使用派發(fā)給他們的門票。讓空蕩蕩的景象顯得更為凄涼的是，大量媒體因為覺得一些比賽無聊也不在賽場上露面。這是奧運會上很常見的現(xiàn)象，尤其是在沒有獎牌產(chǎn)生的比賽中。

　　于是周六上午在北格林尼治體育館(North Greenwich Arena)舉行的男子體操資格賽上，大片空座醒目地出現(xiàn)在觀眾席。超級明星菲爾普斯(Michael Phelps)參加預(yù)選賽的水上運動中心(Aquatics Center)也是如此。在溫布爾登，小威廉姆斯(Serena Williams)參加比賽的中心球場(Centre Court)仍然有幾百個空座，這個球場以往大多數(shù)時候都是爆滿的。

　　因賽場上的空座感到沮喪的并非只有體育迷們。周六下午，印度網(wǎng)球選手布帕蒂(Mahesh Bhupathi)發(fā)推特信息說，為了幫我老婆買一張我明天比賽的門票，我已經(jīng)試了六個小時了，還是買不到，可觀眾席看起來卻這么空，太扯了!!!

　　上周日上午舉行的奧運會新聞發(fā)布會上，英國記者展示了一張男子體操比賽上觀眾席空空如也的數(shù)碼照片，要求倫敦奧委會主席科(Sebastian Coe)查出這些缺席者�？苹貞�(yīng)說，我很樂意待會兒再看你度假時拍的照片。

　　科隨后解釋說，現(xiàn)在奧運會剛剛開始，奧運會上出現(xiàn)空座位不是什么新鮮事;事實上，比賽場館的觀眾往往都爆滿。

　　科肯定地說，觀眾席出現(xiàn)空座位的問題不會在奧運會期間一直存在。他說，組織者正在把剩余的票發(fā)給軍人、學(xué)生和教師，那些場館肯定人滿為患。

　　周日晚間，上述爭議招致了推特(Twitter)一名用戶的揶揄。這位名為“空位子”的用戶寫道，我的祖父是1948年倫敦奧運會上的一個座位，他說因為有了他那次奧運會才如此偉大;我也想成為他那樣的位子。

　　倫敦奧組委的一名發(fā)言人上周六說，我們意識到今天上午一些場館出現(xiàn)了空座位，我們認(rèn)為空座位都位于實名區(qū)，我們正在試圖查明哪些人沒有來以及他們沒來的原因。

　　倫敦奧組委說，它正在努力尋找迅速把沒人的座位利用起來的方式。截至上周日，一些軍人和軍屬得到了體操等比賽的空座票。

　　此次倫敦奧組委共發(fā)出880萬張門票，但只有大約75%的門票用于公開出售，12%的門票給了各國奧委會，這些奧組委將其賣給本國觀眾。8%的票給了贊助商、持權(quán)轉(zhuǎn)播商等人，剩下的5%給了國際聯(lián)合會，國際奧委會(International Olympic Committee)以及為旅游團組提供的套餐票。

　　英國的公開發(fā)售程序曾引起很多抱怨。倫敦奧組委為英國人提供了通過復(fù)雜、多步搖號程序購買奧運門票的機會，并設(shè)立了一個轉(zhuǎn)賣計劃，使他們可以合法地轉(zhuǎn)售自己不想要的門票。

　　搖號招致很多不滿，許多人抱怨完全沒有機會搖到。后來門票的發(fā)售又遭遇了網(wǎng)站故障。轉(zhuǎn)售計劃可以讓一部分沒有用過的門票重新進入流通，但沒有多少人利用這個計劃。

　　盡管有這些抱怨，各個項目都還有一些門票可售，特別是票價較高的項目。上周五，男子體操、沙灘排球等賽事的門票在倫敦奧組委的網(wǎng)站上有售。上周五的開幕式門票到幾乎最后一分鐘都還有賣，不過你必須擁有奧林匹亞眾神一樣雄厚的財力，才買得起剩余的價格分別為2,012英鎊(合3,168美元)和1,600英鎊的入場券。