It’s no secret that the 2018 Winter Olympics hasn’t been a banner games in terms of attendance. Yet, with four days to spare, these games have finally hit a significant plateau, with 1 million people having attended.
According to Around the Rings, POCOG spokesman Baik You Sung said that 90,000 spectators visited Wednesday, which boosted overall attendance to 1,070,000 for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games.
Unfortunately, the news surrounding the Closing Ceremony isn’t so great, as just 70 percent of tickets have been sold, according to Sung, who said, “I’d like to encourage you to promote the closing ceremony to the people around you.”
Athletes have been disheartened by the lack of fans cheering them on in many of the events.
“I think it’s a little bit strange, to be honest, that we’re having the Olympics and there’s that few people in the stands,” Aksel Lund Svindal of Norway said after winning the men’s downhill (h/t Los Angeles Times). “And it’s a bit sad.”
In addition to the attendance issues at these games, plunging television ratings are a signal that perhaps the general public just isn’t terribly interested in the Olympics.
Though, this does not apply when talking about the premier events such as snowboarding, based on NBC’s huge streaming totals during Shaun White’s gold-medal run.