About 1.85 million tickets for the 2008 Olympic Games will go on sale as
the second round of booking starts Tuesday, the Beijing Olympics Organizing
Committee (BOCOG) said.
"The tickets will be sold on the 'first come, first serve' basis in this
stage," Rong Jun, head of BOCOG's ticketing center, told reporters yesterday.
Orders from Chinese mainland residents and foreigners living on the mainland
can be processed on the website www.tickets.beijing2008.cn, at 1,000 designated
domestic Bank of China branches and via the hotline (95-2008).
Rong said that each person is allowed to buy a maximum of 50 tickets, while a
limit of two tickets at most is applied for those high-demand events.
Excluding those reserved for the Olympic Family, sponsors and rights-holding
broadcasters, more than seven million tickets are available for sale, with about
40 percent being reserved for domestic sale.
According to BOCOG, the 63,000 tickets to the opening and closing ceremonies
at the 91,000-seat National Stadium, dubbed the "Bird's Nest", and over two
million tickets for sports events had been sold out during the first stage
between April and August this year.
To make the Olympics affordable to average Chinese residents, about 58
percent of the tickets are priced at 100 yuan (US$13.3) or below, and 14 percent
will be reserved for Chinese students for 10 yuan or less.
Ticket prices for the 28 sports sessions range from 30 yuan to 1,000 yuan.
The most expensive tickets are for the opening ceremony on Aug. 8, 2008, which
cost up to 5,000 yuan.
Income from ticket sales is expected to reach about 140 million dollars and
BOCOG is confident of reaching the target, Rong said.