More than 300,000 people in China have become the first group of lucky people who managed to get tickets for the 2008 Olympic Games as organizers released on Friday the outcome of allocation for the first round of booking.
The Beijing Olympic Organizing Committee (BOCOG) said that a total of 1,593,345 tickets would be allocated to over 300,000 people and that all the 26,000 tickets to the opening ceremony had been sold out, with only one lucky winner for every 21 applications.
Basketball, diving, table tennis, football and gymnastics were the top five high-demanding sports events and 34.6 percent of the applicants would be allocated tickets for the sports events. For the closing ceremony, 15.1 percent of the 172,219 applicants were lucky to buy a ticket.
The first round of ticket sales started in mid April and ended by June 30. During this period, the Beijing Olympic ticketing center received more than 720,000 applications, requesting for 5.18 million tickets. Due to higher demand for some tickets, 72 percent of the 2.2 million tickets available to the public during the first phase were sold.
Rong Jun, head of the Olympic ticketing center, said that for oversubscribed events, a random computerized selection process was used to ensure the fairness of allocation.
"The process was totally transparent and fair," he said.
The second stage of the tickets selling will start from October with the principal of "first come, first get". People can book tickets through a hotline (952008), the official ticketing website and Bank of China branches.
About seven million tickets are put on sale to the public for the 2008 Games, with over 70 percent reserved for domestic sales. Prices range from 30 yuan (US$3.97) to 5,000 yuan (US$660).
(Xinhua News Agency August 25, 2007)
