First understand the concept. Your ticket does not need to be punched, examined, handled by humans. Wave it past the scanner and you are in. This is now a well established procedure and most of us have used it or seen it in use.

There are, but of course, different standards, but the one which will be used at the Olympics supports the ISO 14443 type B contactless standard. As with most transit cards, data on the small chips embedded in the tickets for the games will be hard-coded. Chinese officials are ordering more than 12 million paper contactless tickets for the 2008 Summer Olympic Games, more than was earlier projected.

France-based contactless vendor ASK has announced its Chinese joint venture had won a contract to supply contactless inlays for 12.2 million low-cost tickets that will be issued to attendees of the games.

The contract calls for ASK TongFang to provide the chip-and-antenna inlays to China Banknote Printing, which will then supply the actual tickets.

The tickets also will carry anti-fraud printing features. They are not, however, totally fraud-proof. But safer than, say, bar codes or other methods.

Organizers of the World Cup football tournament in Germany in 2006 issued more than 3 million paper contactless tickets. There appear to have been no forgeries although, of course, it did nothing to improve the behavior of the English football fans.

ASK formed its joint venture with Tsinghua Tongfang, a mostly state-owned computer and IT company, in 2005.
Source: Card Technology

Tickets for the 2008 Beijing Olympics will be embedded with a wireless memory chip and printed with special ink in a bid to curb fakes.

China is taking measures to avoid counterfeits after the 7 million tickets for the Aug. 8-24 event went on sale recently. Three-quarters of the tickets — priced from 30 yuan ($4) to 5,000 yuan — are for the home market and the rest overseas.

High-demand sports events including the 2006 Soccer World Cup and Champions League final have been targeted by forgers.

‘Fake tickets are bound to surface during every Olympic Games,’ Rong Jun, director of ticketing sales at the Beijing Organizing Committee, said at a briefing in Beijing. ‘We want to use the most advanced technology to stop fake tickets.’

The use of so-called radio frequency identification memory chips will help organizers combat pirated tickets as well as speeding up entry into venues.

Competition tickets will sell for between RMB30 and RMB1,000, while entry to the opening and closing ceremonies will cost RMB150 to RMB5,000. Tickets will be available for collection a month or more before the start.

Overseas sales will be handled by the individual country’s National Olympic Committee and its ticketing agent. About 14% of tickets will go to students on the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan and will cost between RMB5 and 10.

Buyers are limited to two tickets for popular competitions such as the men’s basketball finals and one ticket for the opening and closing ceremonies. Local residents will get 26,000 tickets, or 41% of the 60,000 on sale, for each of the opening and closing ceremonies and must submit a photo.
Source: China Daily