Four years after the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the Beijing National Aquatic Center, better known as the Water Cube, has branched out from simple aquatic offerings.

Amid loud music and bright 3D effects, the 50-meter-long swimming pool has morphed into a vast T-shaped stage, where the famed love story from China's classic novel-A Dream of Red Mansions-is brought to life in the translucent color-shifting building.

"This is just the latest creative attempt we have made to better use the venue, in the hope of shedding light on the usage of other sports venues after the Games," said Du Wei, the Chairman of the Beijing BeiAo Group Corp. Over the past four years, the company has staged a total of 160 shows in the Water Cube, ranging from large-scale concerts to ballets adapted from Swan Lake.
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Operational struggles

With the opening ceremony of the London Olympics just a few days away, the post-Games life of the Beijing facilities have once again attracted public attention. As the city of London is vowing to host a "prudent Olympics," most of its facilities and seats within permanent stadiums will be dismantled afterwards.

Since Beijing announced a nearly $40 billion sky-rocketing price tag for the Beijing Games and their infrastructure, doubts and criticism have abounded. Many worry these huge costs could never be recouped, and that the Olympic stadiums, with a total investment of $13 billion, will end up as a costly burden to the city.

History has taught that managing sports facilities after the Games plagues every host city, all the more so for Beijing given the grand scale on which its Games operated.

In Sydney, most Olympic venues went bankrupt after the 17-day event as the stadiums far exceeded the needs of the local population. As the "hometown" of the Olympics, Athens has forked out nearly 90 million euros ($109 million) to keep its leftover stadiums alive, most of which remain empty. The worst example is Montreal, which suffered economic losses exceeding $1 billion and ran up huge debts for 30 years after hosting the Games in 1976.

Many expressed their concern that Beijing would repeat the same nightmare. In a series of photos taken by Reuters early this year, the former facilities for kayaking, rowing and baseball were found deserted in the outskirts of the city.

"These pictures reflect a sad truth and the stadiums featured were those for some less popular sports in China," Jin Shan, with the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times.

The Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Park has to rely on government subsidies to stay open but receives few visitors even in summer. "The management wants to turn it into a water entertainment park. But, without a unique selling point, the park is facing tough questions as to its sustainable development," said Jin.

However, some experts agree that the depressing look of some stadiums does not invalidate the overall post-Olympic use of the facilities.

New business models

As the iconic stadiums of the Beijing Olympics, the Water Cube and Bird's Nest became big tourist attractions in the first couple of years after the Games. During the 2010 National Day Holiday, the number of visitors to the Bird's Nest surpassed 100,000 in three days.

However, this popularity is beginning to fade and tourists have decreased by 40 to 50 percent year-on-year since 2008, Li Aiqing, Chairman of Beijing State Owned Asset Management Co. (BSAM), pointed out earlier this year. As a State-owned company, BSAM is now the owner of the Water Cube and Bird's Nest and is responsible for their operation.

In 2011, ticket sales for the Bird's Nest, worth 50 yuan ($7.9) apiece, contributed 42 percent to the stadium's income, down from almost 90 percent in 2009.

Today the Beijing Olympic Park is no longer crammed. Small groups of tourists, most of them from outside Beijing, pose for pictures without having to worry about being jostled by crowds.

"How to fill the 40 million yuan hole due to the low number of tourists is the biggest challenge we are facing," Yang Qiyong, the vice general manager of the Water Cube, told the Global Times. According to Yang, the Water Cube's income from tourists is down to 33 percent from around 70 percent back in 2010.

After a 10-month renovation ending in July 2010, the Water Cube found a new lease of life. Its main competition hall has become a site for performances and important cultural events, moving beyond being only a sports venue. 11,000 seats have been dismantled and been replaced with catering spaces.

The former training track area today is crammed with swimmers and children who want to enjoy a swim in China's most famous pool. The other side of the Cube has morphed into an aquatic theme park of 12,000 square meters, where swimmers slide down the colorful tubes and water slides into the pools.

Footing the bill

However, this is still not enough to fund the nearly 100 million yuan the stadium costs to operate. To plug this gap, the Cube has found around 15 partners to tap into the value behind the Water Cube brand, including Kweichow Moutai.

"We have narrowly broken even in the past four years, but since the costs remain at around 100 million yuan, it is getting tougher," said Yang, who says a minimum of 2 million tourists to the Water Cube are needed each year to make sure ends meet.

If the Water Cube has diversified to attract more visitors, the Bird's Nest struggles to fill its massive capacity of 91,000 seats. "The stadium's high rent and maintenance costs make it hard to carry out consecutive large-scale events," Cai Shuping, a researcher with the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, recently said.

Unlike some Olympic stadiums in the US, which are banking on well-developed professional sports leagues, the Bird's Nest has to find different means to counteract its 240 million yuan yearly costs, including 80 million yuan in maintenance costs and 60 million yuan of loan interests.

With such a huge bill, the Bird's Nest has been trying to attract a series of high-end events and matches, in hope of getting a good turnover from a packed stadium. However, neither Italian Super Cups nor the Race of Champions turned in a good result. The total ticket income from the 2009 Race of Champions, held over three days, yielded only 4 million yuan, leading the management company to rely on government subsidies to offset a big loss. "It is a standing issue for the Bird's Nest to host a consecutive of events with global influence due to the high costs behind these games," Cai commented.

The same issue applies to the Water Cube. "We could never make money from world championship events, as there are too many costs we need to cover. Furthermore, the business opportunities we could enjoy from these events are very limited, as most of them were sold to other parties well before the Water Cube is awarded the rights to host the Games," said Yang. According to him, the cost for TV broadcasting could easily top 1 million yuan for a couple of hours, letting alone events that last for several days.

In early 2011, Wukesong Stadium, as the host stadium for basketball during the Olympics Games, became the first, and so far only, Olympic stadium to sell its naming rights to MasterCard for 30 million yuan a year.

However, tapping into the intangible assets behind the stadiums doesn't work for the Bird's Nest and Water Cube, which were banned from selling their naming rights as the iconic stadiums of the Games.

"This could represent a huge loss for these stadiums. As 75 percent of large-sized sporting stadiums in the world depend for survival on the development of its intangible assets, this should also be the final solution for the Beijing Games' iconic structures," said Lin Xianpeng, a professor from Beijing Sports University. If the naming rights of the two stadiums cannot be sold, Lin pointed out that naming rights for boxes inside the Bird's Nest could be a way to tackle the problem.

Social benefits remain

On a summer Monday morning, Fu Yanbo, 12, from Chengdu in Sichuan Province marveled at the size of the Beijing Olympic Park.

"This is a must-see place for us in Beijing. If the Forbidden City represents an old Beijing, then the Olympic Park simply symbolizes a new Beijing," said Fu's mother, Gao Bo.

Insiders do agree that there is a lot more to achieve aside from seeking commercial viability for the Olympic stadiums.

"Our goal is to find a meeting point between the inheritance of our Olympic legacy and the promotion of the Olympic spirit as well as urban development in Beijing, so as to finally yield benefits for our people," Liu Qi, the chairman of the Beijing Olympic City Development Foundation, said in a written interview with the Global Times.

As the only facility which was fully built on the 1.1 billion yuan donated from 350,000 overseas Chinese, Yang says the main target of his team's work in the Water Cube is not to turn a profit but to make sure the public can truly enjoy the Olympic legacy.

"For us, we are trying to put all that we've earned back into the stadium in order to guarantee its long-term operation on our own, so as to provide high-quality services to the public as long as possible," said Yang.

Chinese you need:

Aquatic：水上的 (shuǐ shàng de)
Morph：变种 (biàn zhǒng)
Attempt：尝试 (cháng shì)
Prudent：审慎的 (shěn shèn de)
Burden：负担 (fù dān)
Venue：会场 (huì chǎng)
Fade：渐消 (jiàn xiāo)
Crammed：挤满的 (jǐ mǎn de)
Performance：表演 (biǎo yǎn)
Diversify：多样化 (duō yàng huà)
Turnover：营业额 (yíng yè é)
Stadium：体育场 (tǐ yù chǎng)
Symbolize：象征 (xiàng zhēng)
Inheritance：遗产 (yí chǎn)
Legacy：遗物 (yí wù)