About 1.85 million tickets for the 2008 Olympic Games will go on sale as the second round of booking starts Tuesday, the Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee (BOCOG) said.

"The tickets will be sold on the 'first come, first serve' basis in the this stage," Rong Jun, head of BOCOG's ticketing center, told reporters Saturday.

Orders from Chinese mainland residents and foreigners living on the mainland can be processed on the website www.tickets.beijing2008.cn, at 1,000 designated domestic Bank of China branches and via the hotline (95-2008).

Rong said that each person is allowed to buy a maximum of 50 tickets, while a limit of two tickets at most is applied for those high-demand events.

Excluding those reserved for the Olympic Family, sponsors and rights-holding broadcasters, more than seven million tickets are available for sale, with about 40 percent being reserved for domestic sale.

According to BOCOG, the 63,000 tickets to the opening and closing ceremonies at the 91,000-seat National Stadium, dubbed the "Bird's Nest", and over two million tickets for sports events had been sold out during the first stage between April and August this year.

To make the Olympics affordable to average Chinese residents, about 58 percent of the tickets are priced at 100 yuan (US$13.3) or below, and 14 percent will be reserved for Chinese students for 10 yuan or less.

Ticket prices for the 28 sports sessions range from 30 yuan to 1,000 yuan. The most expensive tickets are for the opening ceremony on August 8, 2008, which cost up to 5,000 yuan.

Income from ticket sales is expected to reach about 140 million dollars and BOCOG is confident of reaching the target, Rong said.

(Xinhua News Agency October 28, 2007)