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Ready for another Olympics with few, if any, spectators? No more public tickets will be sold to the 2022 Winter Games in Beijing due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
In a recent statement from the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee, the group said that tickets won’t be sold to the general public. The only spectators will be “invited” groups of people, although the announcement didn’t specify what that means.
“Given the current grave and complicated situation of the COVID-19 pandemic and to ensure the safety of all participants and spectators, it was decided that tickets should not be sold anymore but be part of an adapted program that will invite groups of spectators to be present on site during the Games,” the statement said.
“The organizers expect that these spectators will strictly abide by the COVID-19 countermeasures before, during and after each event as pre-conditions for the safe and sound delivery of the Games,” it continued.
It’s unclear who would be included in these groups of spectators, and how many people would be in attendance at Olympic events. The Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee was not immediately available for comment.
Originally, the committee said that tickets would be “sold exclusively to spectators residing in China’s mainland who meet the requirements of COVID-19 countermeasures,” but that measure has been updated. The news comes as cases of the highly contagious omicron variant appear to have peaked in the northeastern part of the U.S., but national numbers are still at record-highs. The global tally of confirmed cases of COVID-19 has passed 331.3 million, and the death toll is now more than 5.54 million, according to data aggregated by Johns Hopkins University.
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Last summer, the postponed 2020 Tokyo Olympics was also held without fans as the delta strain of the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 spread across the globe. The loss of fans at the Tokyo Summer Games was estimated to cost organizers at least $800 million in ticket-sale losses.
This is the latest hurdle for the Winter Games set to kick off on Feb. 4. The U.S. and several other countries also announced diplomatic boycotts of the 2022 Beijing Olympics last year, with the White House citing “egregious human rights abuses and atrocities in Xinjiang.”
