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The Aug. 22-30 championships will be the first major
athletics event held at the Bird's Nest stadium since the 2008
Olympics, when big crowds packed the iconic venue for both the
heats and the evening finals.
Large numbers of empty seats, especially during the heats on the
morning of competition days, have long been a problem for the
International Association of Athletics Federation (IAAF)'s
biennial showpiece event.
That Beijing had already proved it could get seats filled was a
major attraction when the Chinese capital bid to host the event
but Diack said ticket sales were not going as well as he had
been led to expect.
"I myself visited Beijing for the 'One Year to Go' promotional
ceremony in August 2014 and I was in Beijing again in March and
again in April 2015 to support the promotional effort," the IAAF
president said in a news release.
"On both occasions I reiterated the need to invest properly in
the promotional efforts to secure what had been promised to us
by the Chinese authorities for this event – 100 percent capacity
for the evening sessions and 30 percent for morning sessions.
"But at the moment, we see that some evening sessions are still
around 50 percent of capacity, so we need to work very hard in
the remaining weeks. We have no time to lose now."
Organizers of sporting events in Beijing have in the past bused
in groups of spectators to fill empty seats when ticket sales
have not gone as well as expected.
(Reporting by Nick Mulvenney in Brisbane, editing by Peter
Rutherford)
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