Andrew Loh -
“IF YOU want tickets to catch the Youth Olympic Games, you will have to act fast,” the Straits Times urged on 7 July. “Ticket sales to the first Youth Olympic Games have been brisk, with more than 100,000, or close to 50 per cent of tickets, having sold out,” it reported.
“”More than 100,000 of the 245,000 have been snapped up… These include the 80,000 tickets that were purchased by the Ministry of Education in May,” it said.
Ok. Wait. Hold on.
Is it true that ticket sales have been “brisk”?
Two months earlier, on 26 May, the same Straits Times reported that sales of the 320,000 YOG tickets “have been sluggish”. (Straits Times)
It also reported that since March 31 (when the tickets were first put up for sale), only 20,000 tickets had been sold in April and May.
Apparently, to overcome the slow sales, the Ministry of Education stepped in and cleaned up 80,000 tickets in May. The ministry said “all schools will be allotted tickets.” (Straits Times)
That brings the total number of tickets sold to 100,000, out of the 320,000 tickets available for the games – 20,000 bought by the public and 80,000 bought by MOE.
But hold on.
The Straits Times in May said there were 320,000 tickets put up for sale.
However, in July, the same Straits Times reported the number of tickets to be 245,000 instead.
What happened to 75,000 of the 320,000 tickets?
At the moment, no one seems to know.
It is indeed telling that almost half of the tickets sold so far have to be bought by the MOE.
Will students be made to pay for the tickets?
The answer seems to be yes – according to the Straits Times.
‘Sixty per cent of ticket costs will be borne by MOE while the remainder will be paid by the schools. It is, however, up to the schools to decide the ultimate cost borne by students,” the Straits Times report says.
And the MOE is not telling how much it paid for the 80,000 tickets.
So, in brief:
The 320,000 YOG tickets mysteriously became 245,000 tickets – leaving 75,000 tickets “missing”.
20,000 tickets were sold in two months.
MOE stepped in and bought 80,000 tickets in May but refuses to disclose how much it paid for them.
Students may have to pay for these tickets. It is up to the school to decide how much students pay for them.
The budget for the YOG has more than tripled from $104 million to $387 million.
And oh, dear Straits Times, the MOE buying up 80,000 of the tickets does not mean sales “have been brisk”. 20,000 tickets – or 6 per cent – bought by the public out of 320,000 (or even 245,000) is very sluggish sale indeed.
One wonders if this whole thing is not becoming another farce.
Whatever it is, it should be of great concern to the organizers (and the Ministry of Community, Youth and Sports) that one month before the games are to begin, tickets sales have been so bad – and that the budget for the games has jumped more than threefold, from $104 million to $387 million!
Methinks Vivian Balakrishnan and Teo Ser Luck have a lot to account for.
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Cartoon from My Sketchbook.
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Here are the news reports:
Tickets selling fast, sales “brisk”.
320,000 tickets, MOE buys 80,000 tickets, sales “sluggish”:
245,000 tickets, tickets “snapped up”
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YOG should add to their the bag of tricks from that employed by the Budget Airlines through sensational offers of $0.00 – [YES - zero dollar] – for the early birds on a given weekend.
The ‘hard-pressed heartlanders’ will surely turn up in mass for any freebies, but should learn to resist being conned to buy when told that freebies are “all out”.
The YOG committee will bet on the heartlanders buying any “supposedly remaining limited tickets” after seeing the big crowd that turned up for the “freebie tickets”.
If Singaporeans should wait longer – very soon the tickets will be made valid for multiple entries and multiple venues – when the YOG will be desparate to fill the seats.
Waiting till after the opening ceremony of the YOG – may even get Singaporeans to enter All EVENTS for FREE – just to help YOG to save their faces from holding an event without local spectators.
Let’s not have too much fixation on the tickets since whether 320,000 or 245,000, and pricing at $10-$30 each, they will only make up less than $10m revenue. With a $387m pumped into this event, we are still facing about $380m to make up for by other means of endorsements. I think taxpayers should be worried here.
Nevertheless, I think it is highly misleading & irresponsible for the MSM to claim that ticket sales has been brisk or are being ‘snapped up’. What current WorldCup has taught me is that if you claim to have scored 10 goals, but 80% is thru’ own goals, then you are dreaming of making it to the finals. In the private sector, snapped-up sales means like those iPhones4 or iPads (whenever the defects they might still have) – people literally fight for the products. The Malaysian Cup between Singapore and whatever Malaysian state were also ‘snapped up’ affairs, unlike current pathetic S.League matches. If one is force-selling to school-kids, or even begging everyone to buy, then it is certainly not considered brisk sales.
But, hey, this generation (of leaders) seems to think differently. If GKS had a project overrunning by 5%, I think he would have vomitted blood already.
It is most unwise of them to spend this large amount of tax-payers money here,and note that money goes to those foreigner sportsmen.
Many singaporeans will be very disappointed.
We note that its their attempt to SHOW THE WORLD the filled-seats instead of empty seats.
One attempt is MOE to buy the tickets and FORCE the students to attend,if they dont they will be penalised.
This is a superficial and cheap act.
During my NS days, we were “asked” to donate blood.
158th indeed live up to its name. Success stories are usually plotted or made to look good in advance. If YOG is organised by opposition party, you will hear a different kind of report from them.
Boy, am i glad the Shitty Times no longer lands on my recess area every morning! Now, how to get rid of the secondary “shitty” newspaper called TODAY, that now lands FREE on my recess area every morning. Hmmm……will save them for my neighbour who took in a rescued puppy and is now toilet-training it to PEE and SHIT on the papers!
Dear Vivian
How do u explain to your children that you raked up close to $400million dollars on Sports when you begrudged a request to raise a mere $50 or so a month for the truly needy Singaporeans on Public Assistance and you asked if such needy people wanted the extra $50 to eat in Restaurants??
Guess your children will be like you, born with golden spoons in their mouths, and never know the meaning of the word “empathy”!
As someone said,
“Those funds don’t need to lead to accomplishments; they are the accomplishments”
many departments have been alerted to enhance the hype of YOG to prevent it from deflating. this is only one example of such feeble hype. you don’t hear of people clamouring Singtel and Starhub to screen YOG on their subscription TVs, do you?
We have the boycott singhub campaign. how about boycott YOG campaign
@Yamamoto, 10 July 2010
Why call for a boycott? Already nobody is interested in the damn thing – calling for public disruption would only give them an excuse should the event flops – e.g. terrorists or ‘fifth colum nists’ out to sabo their efforts.
Frankly, pay me also wouldn’t go – it is not that I have a grudge or something against the organisers (Ok, blowing the budget 2x over is really stupid) but even within budget, this type of thingy doesn’t attract typical Singaporeans who are earning hand-to-mouth. Whether $104m or $387m, there are definitely better projects in need to help SINGAPOREANS!
Without doubt, this is a big waste of taxpayers’ money.
Singaporeans are not interested in YOG and neither is the rest of the world.
This was meant to boost the image of the MIW but is turning out be a a big fat financial disaster.
Vivian Balakrishnan and Teo Ser Luck have always been just a lot of hot air. If they are typical of the future generation of leaders, S’pore is doomed!!!
At the end of the day, parents will be forced to pay for the YOG tickets. Then hor, Vivian and Ser Luck would claim that YOG has been a “success”.
I heard that many schools teachers are unhappy about being forced to bring students to attend YOG during weekends.
is this another instant where people are shouldering the cost of yet another goof-up?
i have to wonder…
………………………..
Yamamoto, 10 July 2010
no need to boycott these mega-events, there will be people who do not have the interest in them (unlike some on top of ivory towers) or do not have the time. for many, S’pore is a stressful place to live. certainly we dun 1 2 be blamed for clogging up the roads & public transport rite? XD
certainly not everyone shares the view that mega-events are that “WOW”… maybe “wow” S’pore so crowded everywhere?
lol…
more & more like North Korea siah…
-.-”
This is what you get with poor prostitutes and running dogs in the media. We can’t expect much when ISD intelligence agents are helicoptered in to become instant “journalists”.
This is what these “journalists” do:
YOG: Wait for MCYS to feed them info. Then just report as is.
FLOOD: Wait for MEWR to feed them info. Then report as is.
GIC: Wait for MOF to feed it info. Then report as is.
DEATH PENALTY: Wait for MinLaw to feed them info. Then report as is.
The Straits Times is the laziest newspaper in town. But it is not surprising, given how well-paid and protected they are.
This is what you get when ministers praise a newspaper to the clouds.
I went for the Asian Youth Games.
Ample seats…and tickets were too ex.
That should have shown these guys and given a good indicator. However, one must be willing to learn to do better.
MOE snapped up 80,OOO of the tickets.
The minister for Education is so generous and must be ‘feeling very rich’ cos there are 4 zeroooos in there!!
This must go down to be another ‘FIRST’
for Singapore!!
Very soon you will see NTUC jumping into the wagon, and to out-bid MOE!!
And much later, TH & GIC will also join in the FUN!!
Well, we are a BIG family, are we not??
World class reporting from the Shit Times.. bad news can even twist to become good. ST has lost all credibility it has when it twists news to the benefit of the event.
This is what happens when you have to manufacture enthusiasm and support, you end up looking as real as the NK fans at the WC.
If the people are genuinely interested in the event, they’ll generate their own hype. Just look at the huge outrage over the WC subscription prices. Can anyone even imagine something like that over the YOG? The FB boycott group is already 10k more than the real number of YOG tickets sold.
Now the complaints are all about the give way lanes and exceeding of budgets. The message to the organiser is very clear: Have your dumb little event, we don’t care as long as it doesn’t waste our time or money.
Let’s put this YOG in perspective as regards Balakrishnan and Teo Ser Luck.
To organise the YOG is their Key Performance Index, but whether it is within the budget is out of the equation and of no importance.
So, as usual these so called back-door politicians don’t give a damn whether it’s 3 or 10 times over the original budget estimate.
As long as they achieve their KPI and they get their 6 to 12 month bonus is all that matters.
Costs is not their concern at all. What is their concern is the YOG takes place.
Singaporeans should no longer put up with PAP nonsense and arrogance. VOTE PAP OUT.
They don’t care two hoots about splurging taxpayers’ money as long as they continue to draw million $ salaries.
PLEASE dont force singaporean and student to pay for the tickets
I am laughing at the TWO BIGGEST IDIOT MINISTERS ever elected in SINGAPORE. The way they run YOG is going to be a laughing stock for whole of AISA when OG last organised in Beijing 2008 was very successful. $387 million investment??? All gone down the DRAIN. Very wasteful to spent TAXPAYER monies in this manner and yet they can still keep their HEADS. HEADS should ROLLED FAST.Yet, we dont expect any of these two idiots to be punished but instead get promoted and praised for doing rubbish planning and sub standard budgeting. Very disappointing to see Singapore GOV qualities getting from good >>>> very bad!
I see a similarity of the YOG with the STTA issue. The similarity is that in both the party that wanted so much to do it is the govt and the ruling party for no other purpose then to embellish Spore’s so-called achievements. The people, Singaporeans are merely convenient digits, useful in the sense that without them there is no basis for the govt to want to boast its achievements. That is , it would be empty, hollow otherwise!
Once again, no Singaporeans are really interested or wanted it. Especially when they have much much more important even crucial things to do like making a living in these hard economic times. In any case, they probably feel more than a sense of once again being manipulated.
This govt either has so little EQ or is simply callous about it. It’s high GDP figures do little for the down and out, retrenched and unemployed. That the govt got richer at the expense of the citizens has more than a ring of truth about it!
Does the govt, in particular the MM and PM cared? Not likely, one who cares does not make statement like digging the spurs into the sides of people who are suffering in the downturn. One who cares does not tell the people that he is deaf to what the people is saying. One who cares does not behaved in such hamfisted manner when it comes to helping and allevating hardship of the common people. Finally, one who cares does not continue brazenly to draw astronomical salaries completely out of touch, out of sync and out of proportion with the real condition at the ground and grassroot.
S’pore got too much money in the hands of too few people who are in charge for too long.
people too secure in high places tend to behave as if the place or money is theirs. as the saying goes :”abundance breeds waste”.
S’pore has already witnessed a few very high profile cases even if a fraction (of let’s say 1/10) of the lost could make a dramatic & positive difference to those in need but wasn’t.
could they fault people for blaming them for mis-handling people’s money when the people they are tasked to look after is overlooked time & time again? which side let the other down 1st? the people or the ruling elites? how often is local talent picked over a foreign 1?
maybe the “Great Train Crush Load Challenge” can be organised for the participants to take part in?
some paricipants will be given a pram to handle, some will carry grocery bags, some will carry big birthday cakes that must be handled with care (cannot tilt), a few will lug cabin luggages & the rest will do their best to squeeze till crush. & at any 1 time people in the middle carriages will be picked via sms to exit out through the crowd in the most gracious manner without pushing & shoving (1st world civil society standards, be gracious).
[S'pore is ranked highly as a liveable city, surely having the grace of developed country counts a lot? can a society of brutes make a place liveable?]
this reality segment ideally by aired on channel 5′s “Noose”. game anot?
:D
Papy elitists have a great urge to showcase Singapore as a nation that has become world-class, that they – the papies – have done a wonderful job building Singapore to world-class status.
Money for such projects is of little or no consequence. They have plenty of dough in store, notwithstanding that whatever is spent is taxpayers’ money. Deficit? Increase some taxation somewhere, either now or in the future.
No big deal, when you are the ones setting the rules for the game.
If 100k tickets of a 245k tickets have been sold out in May, I would not call that brisk sales. In fact if I am a private event organiser, I might even be fired for poor sales performance especially I asked my “relatives” to buy 80% of those tickets sold.
If one really aspires to be betterest, a certain amount of responsibility and ownership must be felt in the task. This feeling will convert the feeling of success with brisk sales to one of failure with sluggish sales with only 20k tickets actually sold. This sense of failure will then lead to how can one do better next time or in other things. But I guess it is for the private sector to be betterest.
MOE 80,000 tickets
NTUC 50,000 tickets
SAFRA 50,000 tickets
Mindef 20,000
Chinese Chamber of Commerce 10,000
Religious Council 5,000
PAP Youth Wing 5,000
General Public 30,000
That would make up the whole 250,000 tickets. Then in order to entice them to go, they will be 10 $10,000 ticket draws from the check-in tickets stubs.
Does anyone smell some similarity to Temasek Investment ASSet growth strategy? Yes, just transfer ASSsets to Temasek and the asset grow….it’s just interneral transfers.
But let’s do the sum right in this case. For 250,000 ticket at the MAXIMUM of $30 per ticket the gross revenue is only $7.5 million. Take it that they might get another $50 million in advertisement fees, but then the lost is still $300 million!
$300 million for some youths’ sports. Youth Olympics? None of my son’s 14 years old grade 8 schools mates heard of it in Edmonton, Alberta Canada. What’s worse, it is just after the World Cup.
I can forsee this is will be the first and LAST of this game. What the Olympic council committee wants is to fill up some of their free time in between the real stuff and give their members a free holiday….all expenses paid for with Singaporeans tax dollars.
The Singapore scholars are simply NOT street smart.
Next Singapore will host the FIRST Youth World Cup. So PAP can tell the whole word and its citizens that it’s great sissy cum cancer PM has the legacy of hosting the “Olmpics and World Cup” in Singapore! WOW! What a brave leader sho dared to stand under the rain in the National Day Parade some 30 years ago! Hero to sissy LHL!
Seriously this Vivian and Teo have totally failed. I do not see expect to see them after the next GE.
can TR make a special scoop on what kinds of employees have purchased or will purchase YOG tickets?
Very easy. NRIC can find from CPF board the employer. But only if this is legally ok to do so. just a wild thought. dun take me seriously. I kapo only.
Maybe the YOG foreigner participants can convert to new citizen and help change singapore. I am tired of the typical singaporean mentality of KIA. I hope they bring change to singapore. Pls change singapore permanently.
They can splurge vast sum of money but are miserly towards the needys.They don’t have our mandates but are in the cabinet ashamebly by the despicable GRC scam and lowly tactics.All these so called elites from top downwards are a disgrace to us as they lack the empathy and the worth to be our leaders.They’ve conned us by implementing the CPF’s ruling,GST,FT’s policy for our well-beings,HDB prices,health,transport,cost of basic foods and several others.They’ve wasted billions of people’s money through bad investment and accountability is not given.With so many Ministers and MPs to govern such a little dot,it’s a sure waste of people’s money and the people are being milked high and dry daily solely to sustain them.So,time is pressing and if we can’t see the dangers looming ahead by getting rid of these scums,I feel very pathetic for our future and our generation downwards.
In Our Great Leadership’s words… “don’t expect a loss-free Singapore. It’ll be extremely costly to make Singapore 100% loss-free. And it’ll be even more costly if we stay blind towards such cost-inefficiently & ineffectuve soft-culture exchange that fails to catapult Singapore into the world sporting arena.”
in short, no one really gives a hoot abt YOG but it’s a deep pocket to dip into our country’s reserves. It’s taxpayers monies after all and someone ought be accoutable for this after the event.
Why on weekends?? If they are serious about developing our sports talent and capability, why can’t they give days off to attend the event or at least attend after/before school?
Don’t see what’s the fuss abput this YOG.
Even if given free tickets I would not be bothered, maybe put them aside on the table and forget about them.
Also the two silly mascots are too childishsy and an embarrassment even to hold them. The designers of these two silly toys are still nursing in their pampers or what. So pai seh.
Goodies bag, free transport and plenty of RC Ah Peh and Ah Soh will fill up the stadiums.
Scary looking at the quality of these 4th generation pappies leaders–really no substance.
Where have all the good men gone?
Migrated???
VB must be utterly desperate for money and he must prove his worth not in the eys of Singaporeans but his political masters. Remember lah – Ministerial salaries are pegged to GDP performance.
Helping needy or people who need help from the Ministry he purports to be in charge – aiyoh, very very difficult. Why? Cos it does not earn him accolades or earn him money lah!
Sad indeed that Singaporeans are putting up with such people who ought to be serving the people.
This may sound evil but i hope this YOG thingy really fail! The event is a sheer waste of money with a sole objective to make these cheng hu people look good.
I am sick of oh-yeah oh-yeah oh-yeah!
My gut-feeling is that this YOG stuff will bomb-out — look at poster-boy TSL; he is always clever to put his face on that any “IN” event. Lately, he is distancing himself from YOG. Why? What other big project is he on now? Looks like VB is on his own on this.
I bet everyday during that 13-day period, we will be forced to watch the events on any free-to-air channels …
O-yeah, o-yeah, o-yeah, Ho.. what a stupid song this is, Ho. What a stupid song this is, Yeah.
Even if it bombs they’ll spin it so that it’s a success right? And that the $200+ million over-expenditure is well-spent.
How do we gauge if the YOG is a success or not? After spending such huge public funds what is the objective?
*Facepalm, *Shakes head*
Well, everyone is intrested in the Olympic games but not the Youth Olympic games, even me. Furthermore the prices are way too high. Only the popular events are sold out. If Moe had not bought the tickets, they will be even more tickets left. I think Moe did it out of desperation. 300mil for the games!!! Wow, look at the amt of money we can help the needy. Will we see empty seats in the stadiums? Will we reflect on the mistakes we carried out? We shall just see…
Learn a lesson? Answer for failure? I think you are dreaming of a some democratic country in a far away land.
This is sink-a-pore Pte Ltd, they own this place. We can all get out of this place for all they care. They can just replace us with F-talent. have they ever ask the people here or do a survive if we want the game>
This place and so call democracy is a joke.