First we ran the story 75% of tickets unsold in 2nd phase despite high bookings which is directly below this.

Now we show the other side of the story which are that tickets to the 2008 Games are proving to be among the most coveted in sporting history.

Scalpers already are demanding as much as $40,000 a seat for the August 8 opening ceremony, and tickets for popular sports such as basketball, gymnastics and ping pong (a particular Chinese favorite) are going for ten times their face value. The person in our illustration applying for tickets at the Bank of China simply has no chance. None whatsoever.

The demand for the roughly seven million tickets that the Beijing Olympic Committee is putting on sale for the general public comes from inside and out.

One side are Americans and Europeans who have long dreamed of visiting China and think the Olympics will be the right occasion. On the other, middle-class Chinese families who want to watch with pride as their nation celebrates what is widely touted as a coming-out party.

On the domestic market, ticket seekers have been frustrated by long lines and crashing computer systems.

Two rounds of lotteries to buy tickets have yielded far more losers than winners. The disappointed are pleading their case for tickets on Ganji.com, which is sort of the Craig’s List of China. Even previous contestants cannot get tickets. Ji Ting, a 31-year-old former television executive posted an advertisement for the Olympic Star Security Fund, a charity she set up last year to buy tickets for former Olympians. She said, ‘These retired athletes don’t have much money. They’re not good with computers. They won’t stand a chance on their own.’

The charity has so far been unable to purchase a single ticket through the regular distribution network, so is asking the Beijing organizers to donate a few dozen tickets — at least enough to give to one gold medalist from each of China’s 23 provinces.

Officials of the Beijing Organizing Committee for the Games of the XXIX Olympiad say the competition for tickets is a badge of success.

Jeffrey Ruffolo, a spokesman for the committee said, ‘The interest level is staggering. It’s way beyond what we saw in the last three Olympics.’

So what is the problem?

First, the organizers set aside nearly three-quarters of the tickets for the domestic market. That means fewer to be distributed abroad.

Second, the problems exist only in hot events.

One Beijing scalper offering tickets to men’s basketball and ping pong, along with the 110-meter hurdles in which Chinese heartthrob Liu Xiang is a contender, said he expected to get at least $2,000 each for tickets with a face value of $110 to $150. His advertisement on Ganji.com reads, ‘If you’re not financially strong, don’t bother me.’
Source: LA Times

The Beijing Olympics Organizing Committee (BOCOG) reports that only 450,000 tickets for this summer’s Olympic Games have been successfully allocated, accounting for about a quarter of the tickets available for sale in the second phase.

More than 700,000 orders for 4.2 million tickets were received by BOCOG, but only 123,000 bookings were confirmed after a computerized random draw.

Though BOCOG didn’t give a reason why about 75% of the tickets remain unsold it is fairly obvious — and this is confirmed from the experience of every previous Olymic Games — that some popular events were extremely over-subscribed while the rest of the events were in lesser demand. For example, the number of people who want to go and watch the equestrian dressage contests is finite.

Rong Jun, deputy head of BOCOG’s ticketing center, said earlier that the demand was ‘extremely high but too centralized on several hot events’.

This should not have come as a surprise. It has always been thus.

A total of 1.8 million tickets to the sports events of the Aug. 8—24 Games were put on sale in December. More than 1.5 million tickets were allocated in the first stage of ticket sales last year.

Despite the computer problems which badly affected some initial sales the end result will be the same at these Olympics as every other Olympics. Some events will be easy to get to even close to the day. Others, for more popular events, will be sold be ticket scalpers on the black market.

In Australia, there are concerns about the shortage of tickets for the Olympics. The Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) says it is in talks with organisers of the Beijing Games to secure more tickets for the families of competing athletes.

China has allocated 75%t of all tickets to itself, leaving the rest of the world to share the remaining quarter.

AOC spokesman Mike Tancred says the committee has made it a priority to allocate two tickets to each Australian athlete’s family for every event or session they are competing in.

He said, ‘I can’t say that no families will miss out, but we’ve absolutely made athletes’ families our priority because we understand how important it is to have that support in the stands for our athletes. We’re looking good at this stage. We just need those extra tickets in the preliminaries when the draw for the team sports is completed.’

Mike Tancred says the huge worldwide demand for tickets is making them difficult to obtain.
Source: East Day and ABC

Liao Peigui was convicted of operating a phony official Olympics website and taking money under false pretenses was sentenced to six months in prison in Beijing.

The Haidian District People’s Court of Beijing Municipality passed the jail sentence and a fine of RMB2,000 ($271) for defrauding two netizens into entering fake prize draws on a website he ‘cloned’ from the official BOCOG site.

His method was to get entrants to transfer and ‘award acceptance fee’ of RMB1,500 ($203) to an account he opened in March. For this they would get prizes which included RMB28,000($3,798) and two tickets for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.

Liao Peigui had worked as a computer engineer in south China’s Hainan Province.

China launched a six-month campaign last April targeting online pornography, fraud and theft.
Source: Windows of China

Rong Jun, the head of ticket sales for the Beijing Olympics was sacked after the computer system crashed after receiving 20 million hits in the first three hours of opening.

The sale of 1.85 million tickets, available first-come, first-served, had to be abandoned after less than 24 hours on October 30.

The system, which was designed to handle 150,000 ticket sales an hour, crashed under the weight of eight million hits in the first hour. Only 9,000 tickets were sold.

Rong Jun, in tears, made a public apology. Not enough. Now he is out.

Mark you that seems fair enough. Anyone who thought a system handling 150,000 tickets an hour would handle the rush — expecially in China where this is something of a ritual — is plainly a few fen short of a yuan.

Organizers will now use the lottery system that was used in April when the next phase of ticket sales begins on December 10. Seven million tickets for the Games, to be held on August 8-24, are available to the public. Nearly three quarters of the tickets are reserved for residents of mainland China.
Source: The Times

The ticketing center of Beijing Organizing Committee of Olympic Games (BOCOG), which had its computer system collapse under the load of tickets applications, says it is now going to those applications priority.

It means that the center will firstly deal process applications from people who registered authentic ID information at any Bank of China outlets or the Ticketing Call Center on October 30th.

According to a statement released by the BOCOG, The Bank of China outlets and the Ticketing Call Center will contact every individual who on October 30th registered with valid ID information and contact numbers.

These applicants can submit ticket applications and payments by 5 p.m. on November 30, rather than waiting for a random draw.

Only 43,000 tickets were sold before the computer crashed.

Olympic ticket sales will resume next month and tickets will be allocated by a random draw after those who had registered have first try. The first batch of 1.6 million tickets were allocated by lottery earlier this year.

A total of seven million tickets for the Aug. 8-24 Games are available to the general public with nearly three quarters reserved for domestic sales.
Source: China View