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Buyers snap up Beijing Games tickets

Millions of Olympic ticket applicants swamped the Web site, hotline and designated banks yesterday as China opened the second phase of ticketing for next year's Beijing Games.

The Beijing Organizing Committee (BOCOG) said it recorded an average of 200,000 hits per minute on its main ticketing Web site when sales opened yesterday morning.

Many applicants lined up 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 Web site 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 Games, about 40 percent of them in China, with expected revenue of US$140 million.

To make the tickets affordable for ordinary Chinese citizens, the price for 58 percent of the seats was set at 100 yuan (US$13) or lower.

Prices for the 28 sporting events range from 30 yuan to 1,000 yuan, while tickets for the Aug. 8 opening ceremony cost up to 5,000 yuan.

Fourteen percent of the tickets are reserved for students at a price of 10 yuan or less.
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