Millions of ticket buyers swamp Olympic website, banks

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Oct 30, 2007, 9:29 GMT

Beijing - Millions of Olympic ticket applicants swamped the website, hotline and designated banks on Tuesday as China opened the second phase of ticketing for next year's games in Beijing. The Beijing organising committee (BOCOG) said it recorded an average of 200,000 hits per minute on its main ticketing website when sales opened on Tuesday morning. Many applicants queued outside Bank of China branches in Beijing to wait for a chance to book some of the 1.85 million tickets offered, while BOCOG said its ticketing hotline received more than two million calls in the first hour alone. About 9,000 tickets were sold in the first two hours but problems with BOCOG's computer system prevented a higher volume of sales. BOCOG said it was trying to increase the capacity of its ticketing website and 'improve the operational conditions.' The second phase of ticketing in China will end in January. In the first phase earlier this year, BOCOG sold about 1.59 million tickets to Olympic events and all the tickets for the opening and closing ceremonies. The first-phase tickets were allocated by lottery after the closing date for applications, but in the second phase all tickets are sold on a first come, first served basis. More than seven million tickets are to be sold for the 2008 Games, about 40 per cent of them in China, with expected revenue of 140 million dollars (97 million euros). To make the tickets affordable for ordinary Chinese citizens, the price for 58 per cent of the seats was set at 100 yuan (13 dollars) or lower. Prices for the 28 sporting events range from 30 to 1,000 yuan, while tickets the August 8 opening ceremony cost up to 5,000 yuan. Fourteen per cent of the tickets are reserved for students at a price of 10 yuan or less. © 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur

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