2008 Olympic Ticket Prices Set
Respect to the Beijing Olympic Committee for pricing the tickets to the 2008 games properly.  Wednesday the Beijing Organizing Committee announced that tickets to the games would cost between USD$3.82 (Chinese foot massage) to $638 (two months rent) when they are sold next year.  The group also boasted that 58% of all tickets to the games would cost less than $13 (the value of the largest Chinese paper bill) and thus be affordable to the average Chinese fan.  We often forget with all of the talk of how China is on the rise, and how China has enormous financial reserves, that it is still a developing nation.  And the first developing country to host the Olympics.  And the Olympic Planning Committee took this into account when pricing the tickets.  The average salary for a Beijing resident is less than USD$5000 per year.  And other than Shanghai, this is China's richest city.  With this in mind, the tickets to the Beijing games will be, on average, 30% cheaper than the prices in Athens in 2004.  The International Olympic Committee said of the plan, "The IOC is very pleased that BOCOG (Beijing) has found an affordable ticketing program which will maximize the opportunity for the Chinese public to enjoy the Games, whilst balancing with interest from the international community."  I agree with the affordable for the Chinese part.  But maximizing interest from the international community?  Are there really people out there who would look at the ticket prices to the Olympics and say to themselves, "too cheap, no interest, wouldn't want to be seen at such a reasonably-priced event"?  It's the Olympics!  There's one group of oversized sport jacket-clad gentleman who must be happy about the surprisingly cheap ticket prices-- the Chinese scalpers.  They're gonna make a killing.

•AP: Bejing Olympics Sets Ticket Prices

 China
 Shanghai Daily
 China Daily
 Xinhua
 People's Daily
 South China Morning Post
 News From China
 Shanghai Expat
 That's Shanghai
 City Weekend
 Danwei
 The Peking Duck
 Sinosplice
 Truth About China
 Chinese Pod


 U.S. News
 New York Times
 New York Post
 New York Daily News
 Boston Globe
 Chicago Tribune
 Detroit Free Press 
 Los Angeles Times
 Miami Herald
 Michigan Daily
 USA Today
 Washington Post
 CNN
 MSNBC
 Google News
 Yahoo! News
 TIME
 Newsweek

 Sports
 ESPN
 CBS Sportsline
 Major League Baseball
 NBA
 NFL
 Sports Illustrated
 NYGMen
 Deadspin
 Bronx Banter
 MGoBlue
 Michigan Sports Center
 Yardbarker


 Entertainment
 People
 Rolling Stone
 Internet Movie Database
 Spin
 TMZ
 Perez Hilton
 The Wowz
 Pollstar
 Maxim
 J-L Cauvin

 

 Blogs
 Huffington Post
 Media Bistro
 Gorilla Mask
 Wonkette
 Crooks and Liars
 Gawker
 The Largest Minority
 Truthdig