The first live crowds for an indoor sporting event in sa国际传媒 since pandemic restrictions were put in place in March 2020 will file into Save-on-Foods Memorial Centre beginning Thursday for the FIBA Olympic men鈥檚 basketball qualifying tournament.
The provincial health office has approved 10 per cent capacity from July 1 for the qualifier in the 7,400-seat facility. The tournament, out of which the winner will advance to the Tokyo Olympics this summer, runs from Tuesday to July 4.
As the Montreal Canadiens and Euro soccer championships have shown this month, small groups can still make big noise.
But in an unfortunate bit of scheduling for the host country, sa国际传媒 opens Tuesday against Greece and concludes group play on Wednesday against China in the two-day period before fans will be allowed into the arena. The doors will open to the select public on Thursday when China plays Greece and Uruguay meets the Czech Republic. There are no games on Friday. Fans will only see sa国际传媒 live if the hosts make the semifinals next Saturday and final next Sunday.
A mere two-day special exemption, to this Tuesday, would have meant negligible to no health or safety implications compared with allowing fans beginning Thursday.
Some see it as bloody-minded bureaucracy since Phase 3 of the sa国际传媒 re-opening is officially set to begin Thursday.
It鈥檚 among the many vagaries of the reopening across sa国际传媒, such as having only 3,500 fans allowed in the Bell Centre to watch the Montreal Canadiens鈥� run to the Stanley Cup final, while many more thousands of maskless fans jam together cheek by jowl to watch the games outside the rink on large screens. Meanwhile, U.S. venues are allowing NHL, NBA and MLB games to full capacity.
But the Victoria basketball organizers are accentuating the positive. 鈥淚t鈥檚 good news and we鈥檙e excited that at least some of the public can watch in person and that the provincial health office has confidence in the plan we submitted,鈥� said Clint Hamilton, chair of the Victoria organizing committee.
More than 27,000 tickets had been sold for the qualifier, originally scheduled for last year, before sales were halted in March 2020 when the 2020 Tokyo Olympics were delayed one year to this summer. Hamilton said the limited amount of tickets will be distributed to those 鈥減urchasers still in the system who did not ask for a refund.鈥� Demand will far outstrip supply.
鈥淭hose number of ticket holders in the system, and who stayed with us through all this, still far exceeds the number of tickets we will have available. So there will be a lottery of some sort,鈥� Hamilton said.
The exact number of tickets available won鈥檛 be known until configurations are decided in a collaboration between the organizing committee and the provincial health office.
鈥淲e are working on the seating and distancing between people, and then we will make the ticketing allocations, so until such time, we won鈥檛 have a final number,鈥� said Hamilton.
All fans must wear masks in the arena unless eating or drinking.
The Victoria organizing committee paid $3 million for the right to host the tournament. All of sa国际传媒鈥檚 games will be broadcast nationally on CBC-TV.
sa国际传媒 is in a group with China and Greece. The other group consists of Uruguay, Turkey and the Czech Republic. The top two from each group will advance to the cross-over semifinals on Saturday. The championship game is Sunday with the winner advancing to the 2020 Plus One Tokyo Olympic Games beginning July 23. Tokyo is planning on capacities up to 50 per cent at Olympic venues to a maximum of 10,000 fans.
sa国际传媒, with its Golden Generation of NBA players, is attempting to get back to the Olympics in men鈥檚 basketball for the first time since captain and two-time NBA MVP Steve Nash of Victoria guided the national squad to the 2000 Sydney Games.
