Beijing's Birds Nest Olympic stadium has slashed the cost of visiting the winners' podium, underscoring the iconic venue's difficulties attracting post-games business.
For a mere 120 yuan ($17; 13), visitors can don China's red and yellow Olympic uniform and mount the three-step podium, the official China Daily newspaper said Thursday. Attendants will present them with a flower bouquet and photograph them clamping a fake gold medal between their teeth, it said.
"Our job is to make the Bird's Nest profitable, therefore we have to give the customers what they want," Zhang Hengli, manager of CITIC Consortium Stadium Operation Company, was quoted as saying.
The price of the experience has halved since January. CITIC Consortium said no one was available to explain ticket prices or sales figures.
As memories of last August's games fade along with the Olympic rings painted on Beijing's highways, leftover merchandise has been heavily discounted and managers are struggling to find a role for many of the former games venues.
The 91,000-seat National Stadium has not hosted an event since the Olympics, functioning instead as a cavernous museum visited each day by thousands of Chinese tourists eager to view the site of Zhang Yimou's dazzling opening ceremony and Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt's three world records.
A symbol of China's rising power and confidence, some doubt the stadium will ever recoup the $450 million the government spent to build it, particularly as China's economic woes continue. Maintenance alone amounts to 60 million yuan ($8 million; 6.7 million) a year, although management says an ambitious plan to attract events may help recoup construction costs within 30 years.
Rent was too expensive to lure the city's top soccer club, Guo'an, which backed out of a deal to play there. CITIC has not taken bids for lucrative naming rights, partly due to the slowing Chinese economy and because of the iconic nature of the stadium.
