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Beijing to sell Olympics tickets Demand hampers Olympic ticketing
(5 days later)
Up to 1.85 million tickets for the 2008 Beijing Olympics Games will go on sale to people in China on Tuesday, organisers have announced. Massive demand has caused the ticketing system for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games to crash.
The tickets will be available on a "first come, first served basis" from 0900 (0100GMT) until all are sold. Organisers said an average of 200,000 applications were being submitted through the website every minute.
When the first tickets were released to Chinese people in April it was done on a lottery system. There were also long queues outside banks selling tickets, and telephone lines were jammed.
All opening and closing ceremony seats and 1.59m tickets for sports events were snapped up at that time. This second round of sales has made 1.8m tickets available to people in China, following a lottery in June which allocated 1.6m tickets.
Seven million tickets will be sold for the 2008 games, with more than five million allocated to the host country. Tickets are being sold on a first-come-first-served basis through the official ticketing website, run by the Beijing Organising Committee for the Olympic Games (Bocog).
As with the first batch of domestic tickets released six months ago, buyers of these latest tickets must have an address in China. The website received 8m hits in the first hour alone.
People living in Taiwan, Hong Kong or Macau are not eligible. But by 11am local time (0300GMT) just 9,000 of the tickets had been sold.
Tickets will be available through the official Beijing Olympics ticketing website, branches of Bank of China or a telephone hotline. Tickets were also on sale by phone and at designated Bank of China branches across the country.
And a limit of 50 tickets per person will be in place. Queuing at dawn
In an effort to combat ticket touting, buyers are required to register ID details, but there are reports that a black market for tickets has already emerged. Huge queues built up outside the banks, with some customers starting to queue hours before the branches opened.
The whole system is down, I don't think you can buy any tickets in any way right now Bank of China employee
At one branch in central Beijing, just four customers were served before the computer system crashed.
The bank staff told everyone else in the queue to go home
"We can't process any orders here," a bank employee told the French news agency AFP. "The whole system is down, I don't think you can buy any tickets in any way right now."
China wants to stage the perfect Olympic Games and would like every seat filled with cheering, patriotic supporters.
Organisers warned that people hoping to see the most popular events, including gymnastics, table tennis and the opening and closing ceremonies, may be disappointed.
A statement on the Bocog website asked prospective buyers to be patient and not to keep clicking on the site.