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ollowing complaints from spectators over sold-out tickets and empty seats at sports venues during the Asian Games, the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA) has officially addressed the Indonesian Asian Games Organizing Committee (INASGOC) through an official letter.

The letter, dated Aug. 21, highlights that many seats reserved for officials have been left empty during competitions.

“We have come to notice in various venues during the ongoing 18th Asian Games that a lot of seats are empty as they have been [reserved] by the competition or venue managers for the local national federation officials,” the letter, signed by OCA director general Husain Al-Musallam, stated.

Husain said in the letter that the empty seats did not give off a good impression during
broadcasts.

“The OCA, therefore, instructs that no more than 10 percent of the seats be reserved for officials,” the letter concluded.

In a press conference on Friday, Francis Wanandi of INASGOC confirmed that the organizers received the letter from the OCA.

“The news about the letter is true,” he told the media. “There were a lot of empty seats because they were reserved. Therefore, we are going to decrease the quota for reserved seats to give more people the opportunity to watch the Asian Games.”

Francis said the organizers had originally reserved 30 to 40 percent of seats for the VVIP, media, official athletes and national federation officials.

“Now we’ll change it. There will be no more than 10 percent reserved seats,” he said.

A heated argument broke out between an angry crowd of Indonesian supporters and Asian Games volunteers in front of a badminton ticket booth on Wednesday. Hundreds of people who had waited in line for hours to buy tickets were forced to return home empty-handed.

“I want to watch softball, but they said the tickets were sold out, but when I watched the livestream on the internet, the stands were empty,” netizen Widarko said via Twitter account @Widarko_DK on Wednesday.

Another user, @Madyudi, expressed his disappointment in a photo retweet of a badminton match.

“The stands were empty from the first until the final game. It doesn’t look good on camera. They are only used by officials, athletes and volunteers. It’s better if you sell it to the other people,” he said, tagging the post to @asiangames2018 and @erickthohir.

The Games’ official online ticket seller KiosTix previously suffered from technical glitches and was forced to work with e-commerce platform Blibli.com to sell tickets.

Francis said the problem of sold-out tickets also occurred because not all venues had a large capacity.  

“We apologize because some venues only have a small capacity. For example, Basketball Hall A is too small for the Asian Games. Therefore, we will move the final match to Istora Senayan,” he said.

Francis also called on fans to be patient while INASGOC resolves the issue.

“We want to direct all to the online system to purchase tickets,” he added.