BEIJING -- Tickets to the Beijing Olympics went on sale in China on a first-come, first-served basis Tuesday, but overwhelming demand crashed the computer ticketing system.
More than eight hours after ticket sales began, the online ticketing site had a note saying the system was busy and to check back later. The telephone ticket hotline rang busy, as it had all day.
"The speed of the ticketing system is relatively slow," the Beijing Olympics organizing committee (BOCOG) said in an announcement on its Web site. "It is temporarily unavailable ... those who want to buy tickets through Bank of China branches or the telephone hot line need to try again later."
The announcement did not mention the online ticketing site. However, a ticketing department official said in a statement last week that a main computer system processed all transactions.
Organizers were working to fix the problem, the BOCOG Web site said. It asked ticket buyers to be patient and to avoid constantly refreshing the online ticketing site.
It was not clear how many tickets were successfully purchased Tuesday, when 1.85 million tickets became available on a first-come, first-served basis. BOCOG said 9,000 were sold after two hours, almost all of them through the ticketing Web site and in person at Bank of China branches.
BOCOG's media department director, Shao Shiwei, said the ticketing department was refusing to comment on the situation.
The ticketing Web site was visited 8 million times in the first hour of the sale, receiving more than 200,000 ticket requests per second. More than 2 million people called the telephone hot line in the first hour, BOCOG said.
Tickets that went on sale Tuesday were for the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as all sporting events. About 2.2 million tickets became available on April 15, but only for those whose names were picked in a lottery.
More than 7 million tickets will be sold for the Beijing Olympics, to Chinese as well as visitors from elsewhere.
Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press
Source: ESPN.com
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