The sale of the second tranche of Olympic tickets was suspended last night after overwhelming demand caused chaos during the day: the booking system crashed, phone lines were jammed and serpentine queues formed at banks.
An official from the
In a statement, the organising committee apologised, saying the ticket centre had underestimated demand.
The first-come-first-serve scheme had 1.85 million tickets on sale through the booking website, a hotline and designated branches of Bank of China.
But demand was much higher than organizers anticipated: According to the Beijing Olympic Ticketing Center, the official ticketing website (www.tickets.beijing2008.cn) saw 8 million hits in the first hour starting 9 am, while the ticketing hotline received 3.8 million calls.
Only some 9,000 tickets were sold in two hours; and the ticketing center confirmed that successful orders will be valid.
A total of 7 million tickets are available for the Games, with about 75 percent reserved for domestic sale. The first 1.6 million tickets were allocated after a lottery earlier this year. The third phase - from April to August next year - will also sell tickets on a first-come-first-serve basis.
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