DEMAND CRASHES BEIJING'S OLYMPIC TICKETING SYSTEM By Mure Dickie in Beijing
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
China yesterday suffered an embarrassing Olympic setback as the ticketing system for the August 2008 Beijing games crumbled in the face of overwhelming demand from local sports fans.
The much-heralded planned issuance of 1.85m tickets on a first-come-first-served basis ground to a halt with only 9,000 sold as a flood of orders crashed the online distribution system of Bocog, the Beijing organising committee.
Users viewed 8m pages in the first hour of sales, while Bocog's telephone hotline received more than 2m calls. The committee blamed the ticket system failure on “excessive page view volume” at its website.
The failure of the system, which remained inoperative early yesterday evening, highlights the scale of the logistical challenge that China faces in hosting its biggest-ever sports or entertainment event.
While there is little doubt that Beijing's infrastructure will be more than adequate – with most stadia complete or ahead of schedule – the Chinese capital's mastery of the complex organisational “software” that the Games require remains unproven.
Organisers will be delighted by the strength of ticket demand, which illustrates the widespread enthusiasm for the Olympics among ordinary Chinese.
However, the computer crash is an embarrassment for Bocog, which had hailed the system as “time-saving and convenient” in heavy pre-sale promotions.
It is also a setback for Ticketmaster, the US company that is the exclusive supplier of ticketing services for the Beijing Games through its joint venture, Beijing Gehua Ticketmaster Ticketing, which sees China as an important market.
Ticketmaster was last night unavailable for comment.
The system failure disappointed thousands of would-be ticket buyers, many of whom had queued for hours from the early morning at the 1,001 branches of the Bank of China authorised to offer over-the-counter sales.
Bank of China, the Games' official banking partner, has seen its role as a ticket outlet and payment conduit as an important marketing tool, with local media quoting bank officials as saying they could prompt the opening of “tens of millions of new savings accounts”.
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