Freebies for corporate partners is nothing new in Big Sports. Corporate partners not using their freebies is nothing new either. But the sight of empty seats - and lots of them - has struck a collective raw nerve at the London Games.

Sponsors are very much on the nose this time, with London being turned into something of a Marketing Police State to prevent pesky ambushers from undermining the enormous investments made by McDonald's, Adidas, Visa, Coca-Cola and so forth. Cake shops forced to take Olympic ring donuts out of their windows. Takeaways forced to sell fish with their chips so as not to compete with Maccas french fries. ATMs being ripped out so that only Visa machines are available. The resentment is palpable.

After the Armed Forces, ever useful to have a standby for a National Emergency, were brought in to sit in empty seats on Sunday, LOCOG got into gear on Monday and reclaimed about 7000 unused tickets to place on sale to the public. Too late for many, I would think.

The absurd protectionism offered to rights holders reached new heights when a large proportion of BBC internet radio was geoblocked to international listener before the start of the Games. Even news programs were being blacked out because, even though they were not carrying commentary on Olympic events, they had reporters at the venues who could - horror - describe to an Unauthorised Listening Public what was happening.

On Monday, a compromise was reached between the BBC and IOC permitting news programs such as Today to be streamed internationally because they carried a "minority" of Games reportage. Sports channels would be unlocked for non-Olympic events, which hopefully means that the Test Match Special coverage of the England v South Africa Second Test later this week will be available.

Meanwhile, on the NBC front, their ratings for the much-delayed Opening Ceremony telecast were quite good, but the criticism of their coverage continues. The Independent's Guy Adams reports how he had his Twitter account suspended after repeated criticism of NBC, which culminated in him tweeting the corporate email address of the President of NBC Olympics. In lodging an official complaint with Twitter, Gary Zenkel has turned himself into the #London2012 version of Barbra Streisand.

Oh. Sport. Yannick Agnel won again, this time the 200 metres freestyle in a race which saw Taehwan Park and Yang Sun tie for second, and Ryan Lochte come fourth.

Ryan's official home page (and warning: autoplay audio alert) carries the sub-heading "Go Big Or Go Home". One gold and one silver to date is nothing to sneeze at, but it is not Phelpsian. However, he does currently lead the Phelpsmeister (and don't you love his official ID photo), whose progress medal count after Monday night is 0 gold 1 silver 0 bronze.

Loser of the day? I'm sorry, South Korean fencer Shin A-Lam, but I think it's you.

Finally, allow me to report with some ambivalence that I have seen Nick D'Arcy's entire Olympic career. All two races. For many of us, that was two races too many.

After the Olympics, it's the Paralympic Games, which commence on August 29. Channel 4, the official broadcaster in the UK, has produced an utterly brilliant ninety-second video "Meet The Paralympians" to a Public Enemy soundtrack. The original video is geoblocked in Australia, but curiously an annotated version is not - although embedding is not enabled. With four weeks to go, it's my Youtube do Dia.