Does Anybody Care About the US Figure Skating Championships

Later this month, UNO hockey gets the boot from the CenturyLink Center so that Omaha can host the US Figure Skating Championships.  Sounded like another big time event for Omaha that'll draw huge crowds, right?

You couldn't be more wrong.  Checking the Ticketmaster site, it looks like tickets are plentiful.  How plentiful?  For Friday night, the lower bowl of the arena looks about half full.  I'd guestimate that only about 5,000 tickets have been marked as unavailable on the Ticketmaster site. 

Granted, figure skating is not something that interests me, but I'm surprised at the lack of sales.  I assumed that Omaha would turn out like they do for every other big-time event, whether it's the College World Series, the Cox Classic, or what.  Maybe Omaha has overstretched themselves with this event, or maybe the promoters assumed that tickets would sell themselves.

If they did, they appear to be wrong at this point.