Paralympics get a taxpayer bailout in cash-strapped Rio

The judge said that failure to disburse the funds would mean that the Rio 2016 organising committee would not be able to make payments to national Paralympic organisations for travel, food and uniforms, making it impossible for some countries to participate.

“Despite the problems that we have in stadiums not looking full, we are going after this problem, trying to solve [it] and we believe that the course we took in offering tickets the way we did is the right one”, Andrada said. Mario Andrada admitted that some security lapses in the doping control had occurred due to the lack of training of the volunteers: “Not all the corridors leading to the doping areas were cleared”.

He added that the organising committee had experienced poor initial sales for the Olympics, too, and he expected growing local interest in the Olympics to boost Paralympic sales “as we have seen with other hosts before”.

This is a far cry from the last Olympics, where 8.2 million out of 8.5 million tickets were sold in London.

“Depending on the amount of tickets and sponsorship that we sell, the amount of money that we will get from the government will vary”. Asked how much money was needed, he said about 200 million reals ($62 million) “to fulfil the obligation at the level of service that we have agreed with the International Paralympic Committee”.

But without extra funding, the Paralympic Games will “have to implement further cuts”, he says. At an Olympics already plagued with a myriad of issues, these empty seats present another problem for organizers.

Brazilian organisers had always vowed to avoid such Government support and to finance the event privately.

Empty seats at the Olympic Stadium have become a common sight in Rio.

The IPC intend to give more detailed updates on the “very fluid” situation at a press conference here tomorrow.

The awful ticket sales figures, however, will alarm everybody associated with the Paralympics as the experience of the Rio Olympics would suggest only about half of those who have bought tickets, be they sponsors or the general public, actually attend.

“Long sessions, no-shows, tickets sold and people don’t show up”.

“As we all know, the mayor had committed to buy a number of tickets and that purchase was included in the data that we provided in the meeting in Lausanne”. The team hopes to improve on its 2012 performance, when they finished seventh in the medal count.