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BEIJING : More than a year after the Beijing Olympics, the Bird's Nest stadium has been placed under Chinese government management in an effort to stem financial losses, state media said Wednesday.
"Each time a major event is held at the Bird's Nest, there is pressure to prevent the venue from becoming a white elephant," the China Daily quoted Zhou Bin, the stadium's director of research and development, as saying.
"It is not an easy time for us... we are wracking our brains almost every day," he said.
An unnamed state-owned financial institution "quietly" took over management of the venue in August from CITIC Investment Holdings, which previously owned full rights to the stadium's commercial operations, the newspaper reported.
Operating costs for the stadium, the centrepiece of the Beijing Games, total 70 million yuan (10.3 million dollars) annually, or about 200,000 yuan a day, it said.
Only a handful of events have taken place at the Bird's Nest since the Olympics, including an Italian football match, a concert by Hong Kong superstar Jackie Chan, and an eight-day run of Zhang Yimou's staging of "Turandot."
This week, the stadium has been turned into a track for the Race of Champions, featuring the world's top drivers, including seven-time Formula One champion Michael Schumacher.
On Tuesday night, less than a quarter of seats in the 80,000-capacity stadium were occupied, according to an AFP estimate.
Now that the government has control of the stadium, it will be easier to get permits for diverse commercial activities, the newspaper said.
In the first year after the Olympic Games, the stadium earned 260 million yuan, 70 percent of which came from sales of tickets to tour the venue itself.
However, tour numbers have dropped from a peak of 50,000 people a day immediately following the Games to just several thousand daily, the paper said.
- AFP /ls
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