The second batch of Beijing Olympic tickets went on sale for the second time Monday after the booking system crashed due to overwhelming demand in October.
Sports fans in China can submit ticket orders through the official Website (www.tickets.beijing2008.cn) or at 1,000 designated branches of the Bank of China across the country, Xinhua News Agency reported today, citing a statement released by the Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee.
Ticket sales will run from Monday through December 30, the statement said.
The ticket center will later adopt a lottery allocation system to decide who will get the tickets. This will replace a first-come, first-serve scheme that led to a computer system crash on October 30, when the second phase first started.
Each applicant is allowed to submit only one order for a maximum of two competitions and a limit of four tickets for each event, the statement said. It is an attempt to give everyone a fair opportunity, Zhu Yan, the director of the ticketing center for the Beijing Olympics, said in previous reports.
A total of 1.85 million tickets will be sold in this second and last round.
Organizers announced on November 5 that the lottery allocation system, which was adopted for the first-round sale of more than 1.6 million tickets, will be used to replace the first-come-first-serve scheme after high demand crashed the computer system.
The first-come, first-served ticket sale was suspended after less than a day as the ticketing Website saw eight million hits in the first hour. The ticketing hotline received 3.8 million calls, according to the center.
The results of the lottery will be announced after the deadline and the Bank of China will deduct the money from buyers' accounts in several batches, Zhu said in a previous interview.
Buyers can browse the ticket Website or call the ticket center (010-952008) to check the lottery results and whether their money has been withdrawn, Zhu noted.
The sale is expected to be completed by July. Buyers can fetch tickets at Bank of China branches at that time.
A total of 7 million tickets are available for the games, with about 75 percent reserved for domestic sale.
To make the Olympics affordable to average Chinese residents, about 58 percent of the tickets are priced at 100 yuan (US$13.35) or less, and 14 percent will be reserved for Chinese students at 10 yuan or less, according to previous reports.
Ticket prices for the 28 sports range from 30 yuan to 1,000 yuan. The most expensive tickets are for the opening ceremony on August 8, which cost up to 5,000 yuan.
Income from ticket sales is expected to reach about US$140 million.
(Shanghai Daily December 10, 2007)
