Beijing Olympic Ticket System Crashes
The second wave of domestic tickets for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games went on sale in China Tuesday and boy was it sloppy. The Olympic committee alloted 1.5 million tickets for sale this week on its booking website, a hotline and certain branches of the Bank of China. Perhaps the Olympic Committee underestimated how many people in China have the cash and the desire to take part in the Beijing games. Because the ticket system, in a country that thinks of itself as a paragon of efficiency, totally crashed when demand was significantly higher than organizers anticipated. The China Daily reported Wednesday that 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.” Basically in the first hour, 10 million more people than tickets available attempted to buy tickets. Reportedly, only 9,000 of the 1.85 million tickets were sold before people’s computer began sparking and the phone lines began smoking. The Olympic Ticketing Center is forgetting something. Thanks to the stock market, people in China have cash. Tickets for certain sports sessions cost between 30 and 1000 yuan ($4-$125 USD). Considering some tickets to a preseason NBA game in Shanghai a couple weeks ago cost 4000-yuan, these Olympic prices certainly will not scare anyone off. Even tickets to the opening ceremony are somewhat reasonable at 5000 yuan a pop. For some, that’s a bad night at a Bund bar. China ensured prices for the Olympics would be reasonable and as organizers found out when their website crashed Tuesday, maybe prices are a bit too reasonable.
•China Daily: Olympic Ticket Sales Suspended
•Photo: mikewhit’s Flickr Page