BEIJING - Ticket sales for the Beijing Olympics have been suspended after overwhelming demand crashed the computer ticketing system, the organizers of next year's Games said Wednesday.
After the tickets went on sale in China on a first-come, first-served basis Tuesday, the overload from eager purchasers forced organizers to put a note on the online ticketing website saying the system was busy.
"We underestimated the demand on the ticketing system, our preparations were flawed and our emergency plan was inadequate,'' Rong Jun, director of ticket sales for the Beijing organizing committee, told a news conference. "We brought great inconvenience to ticket buyers and we apologize to the public.''
Rong read a letter of apology, saying some buyers had begun lining up Monday night.
"We are so moved and ashamed because preparations for the Beijing Olympics have received so much support from people all over the country, but our work has failed to satisfy the people,'' he said.
The official ticketing website can handle one million views per hour but had eight million views in the first hour of sales Tuesday. The main ticketing database, which handles all purchases, can process 150,000 per hour but there were 200,000 in the first hour, Rong said.
A telephone hotline also overloaded after receiving 3.8 million calls in that hour, he said.
Organizers shut down sales at 6 p.m. Tuesday and are working to improve the main ticketing database. Rong said they will also make changes to the ticket sales policy to better accommodate demand. He added officials were still investigating the problems and would not provide specifics until Nov. 5.
Other than worries about Beijing's notorious air pollution, preparations so far for the Olympics that start on Aug. 8 have gone well, with the city earning high praise from the International Olympic Committee for its venues.
A series of test events over the last several months have also been praised by athletes.
But the ticketing problems are frustrating for Chinese, some of whom feel the Olympics is disrupting their lives and others who think it's being put on mainly as a show for foreigners.
"The Olympics are such a big event . . . how could such a problem happen? The organizer didn't do a good job of thinking through preparations,'' said a man named Sun, who lives in Beijing.
About 43,000 tickets were sold on Tuesday, when 1.85 million tickets became available. Rong said 90 per cent of the purchases went through the official ticketing website.
Tickets that went on sale were for the opening and closing ceremonies, as well as all sporting events. About 2.2 million tickets became available on April 15, but only for those whose names were picked in a lottery.
More than seven million tickets will be sold for the Beijing Olympics, to Chinese as well as visitors.
