May 5, 2008, 13:17 GMT
Beijing - Organizers of the Beijing Olympics on Monday launched the final phase of ticket sales in China, reporting that all tickets for four events were snapped up within half an hour.
The tickets were offered through a Beijing organizing committee (BOCOG) website and through Bank of China branches, but state media said the website experienced new problems following a crash that forced the suspension of the previous phase of ticketing.
The official Xinhua news agency said more than 60,000 tickets for eight events were sold on Monday morning out of the 1.38 million tickets offered in the third phase.
Hundreds of people queued for hours at Bank of China branches to buy tickets for 16 sports, including boxing, soccer, volleyball and basketball.
But some online buyers were unable to complete payment for tickets because of problems with the website, the agency said.
Buyers are limited to three tickets for two sessions for a maximum of six tickets at each application, but they can apply more than once before ticketing ends on June 8.
Zhu Yan, BOCOG's head of ticketing, last month said anti-counterfeiting technology would make the forging of tickets difficult, but said he still expected to see some 'low quality' fakes.
About 75 per cent of Olympic tickets offered in China's second lottery last year remained unsold despite a flood of applications, BOCOG said in January.
BOCOG said it received more than 4.5 million applications for some 1.8 million tickets but was only able to allocate 450,000 tickets, apparently because most people applied for a similar range of popular events.
It revised the second-phase ticketing procedure after a flood of applications in November crashed the computerized booking system and forced it to suspend 'first come, first served' sales after just one day.
In the first phase last year, BOCOG sold about 1.59 million tickets to Olympic events and all the tickets for the opening and closing ceremonies.
Organizers have said the Beijing games will generate about nine million tickets, however many are designated for the International Olympic Committee, sponsors, dignitaries and broadcasters.
About seven million tickets are to be sold for the games, about 40 per cent of them in China, with an 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 to 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.
The ticketing services are a joint venture between US-based Ticketmaster and two Chinese firms.
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